Self Organising Maps are among the most widely used unsupervised neural network approaches to clustering. They have been
shown to be efficient in handling large and high dimensional data. The Bat Algorithm is a swarm intelligence based, meta-
heuristic optimisation algorithm. It is based on the echolocation behaviour of micro-bats with varying emission pulse rates and
loudness. This paper gives a novel hybrid optimisation method which is here called the Bat Optimised Self-Organising Map. It
combines the basic Self Organising Map learning algorithm with the Bat Algorithm. In this optimisation technique, the Bat
Algorithm is used to initialise the weight vectors for a Self Organising Map to a near global optimum prior to the competition.