This paper presents an overview of some most recent bioinspired methods based on swarm behaviors for the development of problem-solving techniques. The metaheuristics provided here are ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, shuffled frog-leaping algorithm, bacterial foraging optimization and bee colony. The basic biological principles that have motivated the development of each strategy, as well as their computational algorithms, are introduced. Two different applications were carried out in order to clarify the performance of such algorithms. The goal is to emphasize perspectives of applications of these approaches in different engineering problems.
computational intelligence; evolutionary computing; natural computing; bio-inspired computing; swarm intelligence; optimization algorithms