A key aspect of the design of evolutionary and swarm intelligence algorithms is studying their performance. Statistical comparisons are also a crucial part which allows for reliable conclusions to be drawn. In the present paper we gather and examine the approaches taken from different perspectives to summarise the assumptions made by these statistical tests, the conclusions reached and the steps followed to perform them correctly. In this paper, we conduct a survey on the current trends of the proposals of statistical analyses for the comparison of algorithms of computational intelligence and include a description of the statistical background of these tests. We illustrate the use of the most common tests in the context of the Competition on single-objective real parameter optimisation of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2017 and describe the main advantages and drawbacks of the use of each kind of test and put forward some recommendations concerning their use.
In this paper we theoretically investigate underlying assumptions that have been used for designing adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithms in the past years. We relate these assumptions to the movement patterns of particles controlled by coefficient values (inertia weight and acceleration coefficient) and introduce three factors, namely the autocorrelation of the particle positions, the average movement distance of the particle in each iteration, and the focus of the search, that describe these movement patterns. We show how these factors represent movement patterns of a particle with…
This paper introduces a novel idea for representation of individuals using quaternions in swarm intelligence and evolutionary algorithms. Quaternions are a number system, which extends complex numbers. They are successfully applied to problems of theoretical physics and to those areas needing fast rotation calculations. We propose the application of quaternions in optimization, more precisely, we have been using quaternions for representation of individuals in Bat algorithm. The preliminary results of our experiments when optimizing a test-suite consisting of ten standard functions showed that…
Novosibirsk State Technical University（新西伯利亚国立技术大学）
The article presents a study of the Particle Swarm optimization method for scheduling problem. To improve the method's performance a restriction of particles' velocity and an evolutionary meta-optimization were realized. The approach proposed uses the Genetic algorithms for selection of the parameters of Particle Swarm optimization. Experiments were carried out on test tasks of the job-shop scheduling problem. This research proves the applicability of the approach and shows the importance of tuning the behavioral parameters of the swarm intelligence methods to achieve a high performance.
A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the effectiveness of each type of learning is not well understood. In this paper, we address this question by analysing the performance of a swarm in a range of simulated, dynamic environments where a distributed evolutionary algorithm for evolving a controller is augmented with a number of different individual learning mechanisms. The learning mechanisms themselves …
In this paper, we present a hybrid of Evolutionary Programming (EP) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms for numerically efficient global optimization of antenna arrays and metasurfaces. The hybrid EP-PSO algorithm uses an evolutionary optimization approach that incorporates swarm directions in the standard self-adaptive EP algorithm. As examples, we have applied this hybrid technique to two antenna problems: the side-lobe-level reduction of a non-uniform spaced (aperiodic) linear array and the beam shaping of a printed antenna loaded with a partially reflective metasurface. Detail…
A novel meta-heuristic algorithm, Egret Swarm Optimization Algorithm (ESOA), is proposed in this paper, which is inspired by two egret species' (Great Egret and Snowy Egret) hunting behavior. ESOA consists of three primary components: Sit-And-Wait Strategy, Aggressive Strategy as well as Discriminant Conditions. The performance of ESOA on 36 benchmark functions as well as 2 engineering problems are compared with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Differential Evolution (DE), Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), and Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO). The result proves the superior e…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) provide unique advantages for optimizing neural networks in complex search spaces. This paper introduces a new web platform, NeuroEvo (neuroevo.io), that allows users to interactively design and train neural network classifiers using evolutionary and particle swarm algorithms. The classification problem and training data are provided by the user and, upon completion of the training process, the best classifier is made available to download and implement in Python, Java, and JavaScript. NeuroEvo is a cloud-based application that leverages GPU parallelization to imp…
Novelty search has shown to be a promising approach for the evolution of controllers for swarm robotics. In existing studies, however, the experimenter had to craft a domain dependent behaviour similarity measure to use novelty search in swarm robotics applications. The reliance on hand-crafted similarity measures places an additional burden to the experimenter and introduces a bias in the evolutionary process. In this paper, we propose and compare two task-independent, generic behaviour similarity measures: combined state count and sampled average state. The proposed measures use the values o…
Customisation in food properties is a challenging task involving optimisation of the production process with the demand to support computational creativity which is geared towards ensuring the presence of alternatives. This paper addresses the personalisation of beer properties in the specific case of craft beers where the production process is more flexible. We investigate the problem by using three swarm intelligence and evolutionary computation techniques that enable brewers to map physico-chemical properties to target organoleptic properties to design a specific brew. While there are sever…
Formation control problem is one of the most concerned topics within the realm of swarm intelligence, which is usually solved by conventional mathematical approaches. In this paper, however, we presents a metaheuristic approach that leverages a natural co-evolutionary strategy to solve the formation control problem for a swarm of missiles. The missile swarm is modeled by a second-order system with heterogeneous reference target, and exponential error function is made to be the objective function such that the swarm converge to optimal equilibrium states satisfying certain formation requirement…
This paper proposes a generalized Hybrid Real-coded Quantum Evolutionary Algorithm (HRCQEA) for optimizing complex functions as well as combinatorial optimization. The main idea of HRCQEA is to devise a new technique for mutation and crossover operators. Using the evolutionary equation of PSO a Single-Multiple gene Mutation (SMM) is designed and the concept of Arithmetic Crossover (AC) is used in the new Crossover operator. In HRCQEA, each triploid chromosome represents a particle and the position of the particle is updated using SMM and Quantum Rotation Gate (QRG), which can make the balance …
Particle Swam Optimization is a population-based and gradient-free optimization method developed by mimicking social behaviour observed in nature. Its ability to optimize is not specifically implemented but emerges in the global level from local interactions. In its canonical version, there are three factors that govern a particle's trajectory: 1) inertia from its previous displacement; 2) attraction to its best experience; and 3) attraction to a given neighbour's best experience. The importance given to each of these factors is regulated by three coefficients: 1) the inertia; 2) the individua…
Swarm intelligence is a research field that models the collective behavior in swarms of insects or animals. Several algorithms arising from such models have been proposed to solve a wide range of complex optimization problems. In this paper, a novel swarm algorithm called the Social Spider Optimization (SSO) is proposed for solving optimization tasks. The SSO algorithm is based on the simulation of cooperative behavior of social-spiders. In the proposed algorithm, individuals emulate a group of spiders which interact to each other based on the biological laws of the cooperative colony. The alg…
We studied the long-term dynamics of evolutionary Swarm Chemistry by extending the simulation length ten-fold compared to earlier work and by developing and using a new automated object harvesting method. Both macroscopic dynamics and microscopic object features were characterized and tracked using several measures. Results showed that the evolutionary dynamics tended to settle down into a stable state after the initial transient period, and that the extent of environmental perturbations also affected the evolutionary trends substantially. In the meantime, the automated harvesting method succe…
Swarming behaviors in animals have been extensively studied due to their implications for the evolution of cooperation, social cognition, and predator-prey dynamics. An important goal of these studies is discerning which evolutionary pressures favor the formation of swarms. One hypothesis is that swarms arise because the presence of multiple moving prey in swarms causes confusion for attacking predators, but it remains unclear how important this selective force is. Using an evolutionary model of a predator-prey system, we show that predator confusion provides a sufficient selection pressure to…
The range of applications of traditional optimization methods are limited by the features of the object variables, and of both the objective and the constraint functions. In contrast, population-based algorithms whose optimization capabilities are emergent properties, such as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization, present almost no restriction on those features and can handle different optimization problems with few or no adaptations. Their main drawbacks consist of their comparatively higher computational cost and difficulty in handling equality constraints. The particle swa…
The present work provides a new approach to evolve ligand structures which represent possible drug to be docked to the active site of the target protein. The structure is represented as a tree where each non-empty node represents a functional group. It is assumed that the active site configuration of the target protein is known with position of the essential residues. In this paper the interaction energy of the ligands with the protein target is minimized. Moreover, the size of the tree is difficult to obtain and it will be different for different active sites. To overcome the difficulty, a va…
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a metaheuristic global optimization paradigm that has gained prominence in the last two decades due to its ease of application in unsupervised, complex multidimensional problems which cannot be solved using traditional deterministic algorithms. The canonical particle swarm optimizer is based on the flocking behavior and social co-operation of birds and fish schools and draws heavily from the evolutionary behavior of these organisms. This paper serves to provide a thorough survey of the PSO algorithm with special emphasis on the development, deployment and i…
The presence of functional diversity within a group has been demonstrated to lead to greater robustness, higher performance and increased problem-solving ability in a broad range of studies that includes insect groups, human groups and swarm robotics. Evolving group diversity however has proved challenging within Evolutionary Robotics, requiring reproductive isolation and careful attention to population size and selection mechanisms. To tackle this issue, we introduce a novel, decentralised, variant of the MAP-Elites illumination algorithm which is hybridised with a well-known distributed evol…
The aim of this paper is to highlight and explore a traditional problem, which is the minimum spanning tree, and finding the shortest-path in network routing, by using Swarm Intelligence. This work to be considered as an investigation topic with combination between operations research, discrete mathematics, and evolutionary computing aiming to solve one of networking problems.
Roborobo! is a multi-platform, highly portable, robot simulator for large-scale collective robotics experiments. Roborobo! is coded in C++, and follows the KISS guideline ("Keep it simple"). Therefore, its external dependency is solely limited to the widely available SDL library for fast 2D Graphics. Roborobo! is based on a Khepera/ePuck model. It is targeted for fast single and multi-robots simulation, and has already been used in more than a dozen published research mainly concerned with evolutionary swarm robotics, including environment-driven self-adaptation and distributed evolutionary op…
Biologically inspired computing is an area of computer science which uses the advantageous properties of biological systems. It is the amalgamation of computational intelligence and collective intelligence. Biologically inspired mechanisms have already proved successful in achieving major advances in a wide range of problems in computing and communication systems. The consortium of bio-inspired computing are artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, fractal geometry, DNA computing and quantum computing, etc. This article gives an introd…
Traditional methods present a very restrictive range of applications, mainly limited by the features of the function to be optimized and of the constraint functions. In contrast, evolutionary algorithms present almost no restriction to the features of these functions, although the most appropriate constraint-handling technique is still an open question. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is sometimes viewed as another evolutionary algorithm because of their many similarities, despite not being inspired by the same metaphor. Namely, they evolve a population of individuals taking into …
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) that utilizes a swarm of particles to solve an optimization problem. Slow Intelligence System (SIS) is a learning framework which slowly learns the solution to a problem performing a series of operations. Moreover, Learning Automata (LA) are minuscule but effective decision making entities which are best suited to act as a controller component. In this paper, we combine two isolate populations of PSO to forge the Adaptive Intelligence Optimizer (AIO) which harnesses the advantages of a bi-population PSO to escape from the loca…
We apply two evolutionary search algorithms: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to the design of Cellular Automata (CA) that can perform computational tasks requiring global coordination. In particular, we compare search efficiency for PSO and GAs applied to both the density classification problem and to the novel generation of 'chaotic' CA. Our work furthermore introduces a new variant of PSO, the Binary Global-Local PSO (BGL-PSO).
Premature convergence in particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm usually leads to gaining local optimum and preventing from surveying those regions of solution space which have optimal points in. In this paper, by applying special mechanisms, suitable regions were detected and then swarm was guided to them by dispersing part of particles on proper times. This process is called dynamic swarm dispersion in PSO (DSDPSO) algorithm. In order to specify the proper times and to rein the evolutionary process alternating between exploring and exploiting behaviors, we used a diversity measuring appr…
The advantages of evolutionary algorithms with respect to traditional methods have been greatly discussed in the literature. While particle swarm optimizers share such advantages, they outperform evolutionary algorithms in that they require lower computational cost and easier implementation, involving no operator design and few coefficients to be tuned. However, even marginal variations in the settings of these coefficients greatly influence the dynamics of the swarm. Since this paper does not intend to study their tuning, general-purpose settings are taken from previous studies, and virtually…
Numerical Association Rule Mining is a popular variant of Association Rule Mining, where numerical attributes are handled without discretization. This means that the algorithms for dealing with this problem can operate directly, not only with categorical, but also with numerical attributes. Until recently, a big portion of these algorithms were based on a stochastic nature-inspired population-based paradigm. As a result, evolutionary and swarm intelligence-based algorithms showed big efficiency for dealing with the problem. In line with this, the main mission of this chapter is to make a histo…
Many optimization algorithms have been developed by drawing inspiration from swarm intelligence (SI). These SI-based algorithms can have some advantages over traditional algorithms. In this paper, we carry out a critical analysis of these SI-based algorithms by analyzing their ways to mimic evolutionary operators. We also analyze the ways of achieving exploration and exploitation in algorithms by using mutation, crossover and selection. In addition, we also look at algorithms using dynamic systems, self-organization and Markov chain framework. Finally, we provide some discussions and topics fo…
University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）；The Alan Turing Institute（阿兰·图灵研究所）
Evolutionary Computation is a group of biologically inspired algorithms used to solve complex optimisation problems. It can be split into Evolutionary Algorithms, which take inspiration from genetic inheritance, and Swarm Intelligence algorithms, that take inspiration from cultural inheritance. However, recent developments have focused on computational or mathematical adaptions, leaving their biological roots behind. This has left much of the modern evolutionary literature relatively unexplored. To understand which evolutionary mechanisms have been considered, and which have been overlooked, t…
Recently, evolutionary multitasking (EMT) has been successfully used in the field of high-dimensional classification. However, the generation of multiple tasks in the existing EMT-based feature selection (FS) methods is relatively simple, using only the Relief-F method to collect related features with similar importance into one task, which cannot provide more diversified tasks for knowledge transfer. Thus, this paper devises a new EMT algorithm for FS in high-dimensional classification, which first adopts different filtering methods to produce multiple tasks and then modifies a competitive sw…
Evolutionary optimization algorithms, including particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been successfully applied in oil industry for production planning and control. Such optimization studies are quite challenging due to large number of decision variables, production scenarios, and subsurface uncertainties. In this work, a multi-stage, multi-swarm PSO (MS2PSO) is proposed to fix certain issues with canonical PSO algorithm such as premature convergence, excessive influence of global best solution, and oscillation. Multiple experiments are conducted using Olympus benchmark to compare the effica…
Motivated by particle swarm optimization (PSO) and quantum computing theory, we have presented a quantum variant of PSO (QPSO) mutated with Cauchy operator and natural selection mechanism (QPSO-CD) from evolutionary computations. The performance of proposed hybrid quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization with Cauchy distribution (QPSO-CD) is investigated and compared with its counterparts based on a set of benchmark problems. Moreover, QPSO-CD is employed in well-studied constrained engineering problems to investigate its applicability. Further, the correctness and time complexity of QPSO-C…
Evolutionary algorithms have been frequently applied to constrained continuous optimisation problems. We carry out feature based comparisons of different types of evolutionary algorithms such as evolution strategies, differential evolution and particle swarm optimisation for constrained continuous optimisation. In our study, we examine how sets of constraints influence the difficulty of obtaining close to optimal solutions. Using a multi-objective approach, we evolve constrained continuous problems having a set of linear and/or quadratic constraints where the different evolutionary approaches …
Evolutionary computation (EC) algorithms, such as discrete and multi-objective versions of particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been applied to solve the Feature selection (FS) problem, tackling the combinatorial explosion of search spaces that are peppered with local minima. Furthermore, high-dimensional FS problems such as finding a small set of biomarkers to make a diagnostic call add an additional challenge as such methods ability to pick out the most important features must remain unchanged in decision spaces of increasing dimensions and presence of irrelevant features. We developed a …
Multi-task optimization (MTO) studies how to simultaneously solve multiple optimization problems for the purpose of obtaining better performance on each problem. Over the past few years, evolutionary MTO (EMTO) was proposed to handle MTO problems via evolutionary algorithms. So far, many EMTO algorithms have been developed and demonstrated well performance on solving real-world problems. However, there remain many works to do in adapting knowledge transfer to task relatedness in EMTO. Different from the existing works, we develop a self-adaptive multi-task particle swarm optimization (SaMTPSO)…
Heterogeneous comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (HCLPSO) is a type of evolutionary algorithm with enhanced exploration and exploitation capabilities. The low-discrepancy sequence (LDS) is more uniform in covering the search space than random sequences. In this paper, making use of the good uniformity of LDS to improve HCLPSO is researched. Numerical experiments are performed to show that it is impossible to effectively improve the search ability of HCLPSO by only using LDS to generate the initial population. However, if we properly choose some random sequences from the HCLPSO …
In this paper, a novel swarm intelligent algorithm is proposed, known as the fitness dependent optimizer (FDO). The bee swarming reproductive process and their collective decision-making have inspired this algorithm; it has no algorithmic connection with the honey bee algorithm or the artificial bee colony algorithm. It is worth mentioning that FDO is considered a particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm that updates the search agent position by adding velocity (pace). However, FDO calculates velocity differently; it uses the problem fitness function value to produce weights, and thes…
We introduce a novel approach for discriminative classification using evolutionary algorithms. We first propose an algorithm to optimize the total loss value using a modified 0-1 loss function in a one-dimensional space for classification. We then extend this algorithm for multi-dimensional classification using an evolutionary algorithm. The proposed evolutionary algorithm aims to find a hyperplane which best classifies instances while minimizes the classification risk. We test particle swarm optimization, evolutionary strategy, and covariance matrix adaptation evolutionary strategy for optimi…
There exists a range of different models for estimating and simulating credit risk transitions to optimally manage credit risk portfolios and products. In this chapter we present a Coupled Markov Chain approach to model rating transitions and thereby default probabilities of companies. As the likelihood of the model turns out to be a non-convex function of the parameters to be estimated, we apply heuristics to find the ML estimators. To this extent, we outline the model and its likelihood function, and present both a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, as well as an Evolutionary Optimizatio…
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is an iterative search method that moves a set of candidate solution around a search-space towards the best known global and local solutions with randomized step lengths. PSO frequently accelerates optimization in practical applications, where gradients are not available and function evaluations expensive. Yet the traditional PSO algorithm ignores the potential knowledge that could have been gained of the objective function from the observations by individual particles. Hence, we draw upon concepts from Bayesian optimization and introduce a stochastic surrogat…
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications（重庆邮电大学）；Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院重庆绿色智能技术研究院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Southwest University（西南大学）
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm is an effective learning strategy to build a latent factor analysis (LFA) model on a high-dimensional and incomplete (HDI) matrix. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is commonly adopted to make an SGD-based LFA model's hyper-parameters, i.e, learning rate and regularization coefficient, self-adaptation. However, a standard PSO algorithm may suffer from accuracy loss caused by premature convergence. To address this issue, this paper incorporates more historical information into each particle's evolutionary process for avoiding premature con…
In last decades optimization and control of complex systems that possessed various conflicted objectives simultaneously attracted an incremental interest of scientists. This is because of the vast applications of these systems in various fields of real life engineering phenomena that are generally multi modal, non convex and multi criterion. Hence, many researchers utilized versatile intelligent models such as Pareto based techniques, game theory (cooperative and non cooperative games), neuro evolutionary systems, fuzzy logic and advanced neural networks for handling these types of problems. I…
The growing complexity of real-world problems has motivated computer scientists to search for efficient problem-solving methods. Metaheuristics based on evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence are outstanding examples of nature-inspired solution techniques. Inspired by the social spiders, we propose a novel Social Spider Algorithm to solve global optimization problems. This algorithm is mainly based on the foraging strategy of social spiders, utilizing the vibrations on the spider web to determine the positions of preys. Different from the previously proposed swarm intelligence algorit…
Metaheuristics (MHs) in general and Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) in particular are well known tools for successful optimization of difficult problems. But when is their application meaningful and how does one approach such a project as a novice? How do you avoid beginner's mistakes or use the design possibilities of a metaheuristic search as efficiently as possible? This paper tries to give answers to these questions based on 30 years of research and application of the Evolutionary Algorithm GLEAM and its memetic extension HyGLEAM. Most of the experience gathered and discussed here can also b…
