I had the opportunity to be involved in nature-inspired heuristic research. We studied a paper that detailed the red fox algorithm, an optimization algorithm based off the behavior of red foxes found in Norway. We then implemented our own version of the red fox algorithm to solve for travelling salesman problem instances. We ran benchmark tests to see how the red fox algorithm compared to other nature-inspired optimization algorithms (such as the bat algorithm).
We used the red fox algorithm to generate images: the picture above depicts the algorithm running on pr76 - a TSP instance that contains 76 cities. The colored lines represent the most efficient path found, and the white paths represent paths that were traversed, with the opacity denoting how often they were traversed. The picture below was created from stippled butterfly clipart - this was more of an artistic endeavor rather than serving any specific research purpose.
