Many problems in science and engineering can be formulated as optimization problems, subject to complex nonlinear constraints. The solutions of highly nonlinear problems usually require sophisticated optimization algorithms, and traditional algorithms may struggle to deal with such problems. A current trend is to use nature-inspired algorithms due to their flexibility and effectiveness. However, there are some key issues concerning nature-inspired computation and swarm intelligence. This paper provides an in-depth review of some recent nature-inspired algorithms with the emphasis on their search mechanisms and mathematical foundations. Some challenging issues are identified and five open problems are highlighted, concerning the analysis of algorithmic convergence and stability, parameter tuning, mathematical framework, role of benchmarking and scalability. These problems are discussed with the directions for future research.
Large-scale problems are nonlinear problems that need metaheuristics, or global optimization algorithms. This paper reviews nature-inspired metaheuristics, then it introduces a framework named Competitive Ant Colony Optimization inspired by the chemical communications among insects. Then a case study is presented to investigate the proposed framework for large-scale global optimization.
Swarm intelligence and bio-inspired algorithms form a hot topic in the developments of new algorithms inspired by nature. These nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms can be based on swarm intelligence, biological systems, physical and chemical systems. Therefore, these algorithms can be called swarm-intelligence-based, bio-inspired, physics-based and chemistry-based, depending on the sources of inspiration. Though not all of them are efficient, a few algorithms have proved to be very efficient and thus have become popular tools for solving real-world problems. Some algorithms are insufficie…
Nature is known to be the best optimizer. Natural processes most often than not reach an optimal equilibrium. Scientists have always strived to understand and model such processes.Thus, many algorithms exist today that are inspired by nature. Many of these algorithms and heuristics can be used to solve problems for which no polynomial time algorithms exist,such as Job Shop Scheduling and many other Combinatorial Optimization problems. We will discuss some of these algorithms and heuristics and how they help us solve complex problems of practical importance.
In recent years, a plethora of new metaheuristic algorithms have explored different sources of inspiration within the biological and natural worlds. This nature-inspired approach to algorithm design has been widely criticised. A notable issue is the tendency for authors to use terminology that is derived from the domain of inspiration, rather than the broader domains of metaheuristics and optimisation. This makes it difficult to both comprehend how these algorithms work and understand their relationships to other metaheuristics. This paper attempts to address this issue, at least to some exten…
In the field of derivative-free optimization, both of its main branches, the deterministic and nature-inspired techniques, experienced in recent years substantial advancement. In this paper, we provide an extensive computational comparison of selected methods from each of these branches. The chosen representatives were either standard and well-utilized methods, or the best-performing methods from recent numerical comparisons. The computational comparison was performed on five different benchmark sets and the results were analyzed in terms of performance, time complexity, and convergence proper…
Nature-inspired algorithms are commonly used for solving the various optimization problems. In past few decades, various researchers have proposed a large number of nature-inspired algorithms. Some of these algorithms have proved to be very efficient as compared to other classical optimization methods. A young researcher attempting to undertake or solve a problem using nature-inspired algorithms is bogged down by a plethora of proposals that exist today. Not every algorithm is suited for all kinds of problem. Some score over others. In this paper, an attempt has been made to summarize various …
Despite the increasing popularity of metaheuristics, many crucially important questions remain unanswered. There are two important issues: theoretical framework and the gap between theory and applications. At the moment, the practice of metaheuristics is like heuristic itself, to some extent, by trial and error. Mathematical analysis lags far behind, apart from a few, limited, studies on convergence analysis and stability, there is no theoretical framework for analyzing metaheuristic algorithms. I believe mathematical and statistical methods using Markov chains and dynamical systems can be ver…
São Paulo State University（圣保罗州立大学）；Middlesex University（米德尔塞克斯大学）
Feature selection for a given model can be transformed into an optimization task. The essential idea behind it is to find the most suitable subset of features according to some criterion. Nature-inspired optimization can mitigate this problem by producing compelling yet straightforward solutions when dealing with complicated fitness functions. Additionally, new mathematical representations, such as quaternions and octonions, are being used to handle higher-dimensional spaces. In this context, we are introducing a meta-heuristic optimization framework in a hypercomplex-based feature selection, …
A significant challenge in nature-inspired algorithmics is the identification of specific characteristics of problems that make them harder (or easier) to solve using specific methods. The hope is that, by identifying these characteristics, we may more easily predict which algorithms are best-suited to problems sharing certain features. Here, we approach this problem using fitness landscape analysis. Techniques already exist for measuring the "difficulty" of specific landscapes, but these are often designed solely with evolutionary algorithms in mind, and are generally specific to discrete opt…
University of Georgia（佐治亚大学）；Florida International University（佛罗里达国际大学）
In the past 30 years, scientists have searched nature, including animals and insects, and biology in order to discover, understand, and model solutions for solving large-scale science challenges. The study of bionics reveals that how the biological structures, functions found in nature have improved our modern technologies. In this study, we present our discovery of evolutionary and nature-inspired algorithms applications in Data Science and Data Analytics in three main topics of pre-processing, supervised algorithms, and unsupervised algorithms. Among all applications, in this study, we aim t…
Neuroscience Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences（德黑兰医科大学神经科学研究所）
The human nervous system utilizes synaptic plasticity to solve optimization problems. Previous studies have tried to add the plasticity factor to the training process of artificial neural networks, but most of those models require complex external control over the network or complex novel rules. In this manuscript, a novel nature-inspired optimization algorithm is introduced that imitates biological neural plasticity. Furthermore, the model is tested on three datasets and the results are compared with gradient descent optimization.
Nature inspired algorithms has brought solutions to complex problems in optimization where the optimization and solution of complex problems is highly complex and nonlinear. There is a need to use proper design of the cost function or the fitness function in terms of the parameters to be optimized, this can be used in solving any type of such problems. In this paper the nature inspired algorithms has played important role in the optimal design of antenna array with improved radiation characteristics. In this paper, 20 elements linearly spaced array is used as an example of nature inspired opti…
This paper presents an advancement to an approach for model-independent surrogate-based optimization with adaptive batch sampling, known as Adaptive Model Refinement (AMR). While the original AMR method provides unique decisions with regards to "when" to sample and "how many" samples to add (to preserve the credibility of the optimization search process), it did not provide specific direction towards "where" to sample in the design variable space. This paper thus introduces the capability to identify optimum location to add new samples. The location of the infill points is decided by integrati…
Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited（罗伯特·博世工程与商业解决方案私人有限公司）；HEC Paris（巴黎高等商学院）
The technologies and algorithms are growing at an exponential rate. The technologies are capable enough to solve technically challenging and complex problems which seemed impossible task. However, the trending methods and approaches are facing multiple challenges on various fronts of data, algorithms, software, computational complexities, and energy efficiencies. Nature also faces similar challenges. Nature has solved those challenges and formulation of those are available as Nature Inspired Algorithms (NIA), which are derived based on the study of nature. A novel method based on TRIZ to map t…
In order to solve the critical issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), with concern for limited sensor lifetime, nature-inspired algorithms are emerging as a suitable method. Getting optimal network coverage is one of those challenging issues that need to be examined critically before any network setup. Optimal network coverage not only minimizes the consumption of limited energy of battery-driven sensors but also reduce the sensing of redundant information. In this paper, we focus on nature-inspired optimization algorithms concerning the optimal coverage in WSNs. In the first half of the p…
Optimization algorithms are normally influenced by meta-heuristic approach. In recent years several hybrid methods for optimization are developed to find out a better solution. The proposed work using meta-heuristic Nature Inspired algorithm is applied with back-propagation method to train a feed-forward neural network. Firefly algorithm is a nature inspired meta-heuristic algorithm, and it is incorporated into back-propagation algorithm to achieve fast and improved convergence rate in training feed-forward neural network. The proposed technique is tested over some standard data set. It is fou…
The problem of parameterization is often central to the effective deployment of nature-inspired algorithms. However, finding the optimal set of parameter values for a combination of problem instance and solution method is highly challenging, and few concrete guidelines exist on how and when such tuning may be performed. Previous work tends to either focus on a specific algorithm or use benchmark problems, and both of these restrictions limit the applicability of any findings. Here, we examine a number of different algorithms, and study them in a "problem agnostic" fashion (i.e., one that is no…
University of Tabriz（大不里士大学）；Shahed University（沙希德大学）；Virginia Commonwealth University（弗吉尼亚联邦大学）；Australian Catholic University（澳大利亚天主教大学）
This paper proposes a novel nature-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm called the Golden Tortoise Beetle Optimizer (GTBO) to solve optimization problems. It mimics golden tortoise beetle's behavior of changing colors to attract opposite sex for mating and its protective strategy that uses a kind of anal fork to deter predators. The algorithm is modeled based on the beetle's dual attractiveness and survival strategy to generate new solutions for optimization problems. To measure its performance, the proposed GTBO is compared with five other nature-inspired evolutionary algorithms on 24 well-known…
Halfway Escape Optimization: A Quantum-Inspired Solution for General Optimization Problems
School of AI and Advanced Computing, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University（西交利物浦大学人工智能与高级计算学院）；School of Engineering and Technology, Sunway University（双威大学工程与技术学院）
Optimization aims at selecting a feasible set of parameters in an attempt to solve a particular problem, being applied in a wide range of applications, such as operations research, machine learning fine-tuning, and control engineering, among others. Nevertheless, traditional iterative optimization methods use the evaluation of gradients and Hessians to find their solutions, not being practical due to their computational burden and when working with non-convex functions. Recent biological-inspired methods, known as meta-heuristics, have arisen in an attempt to fulfill these problems. Even thoug…
This paper proposes a new numerical optimization algorithm inspired by the strawberry plant for solving complicated engineering problems. Plants like strawberry develop both runners and roots for propagation and search for water resources and minerals. In these plants, runners and roots can be thought of as tools for global and local searches, respectively. The proposed algorithm has three main differences with the trivial nature-inspired optimization algorithms: duplication-elimination of the computational agents at all iterations, subjecting all agents to both small and large movements from …
Exhaustive Exploitation of Nature-inspired Computation for Cancer Screening in an Ensemble Manner
School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University（吉林大学人工智能学院）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Hebei University of Technology（河北工业大学人工智能学院）；School of Information Science and Technology, Northeast Normal University（东北师范大学信息科学与技术学院）；Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学计算机科学系）
University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学）；National University of Mongolia（蒙古国立大学）；Adaptive Intelligent Systems Pty Ltd（自适应智能系统私人有限公司）
Although researchers often comment on the rising popularity of nature-inspired meta-heuristics (NIM), there has been a paucity of data to directly support the claim that NIM are growing in prominence compared to other optimization techniques. This study presents evidence that the use of NIM is not only growing, but indeed appears to have surpassed mathematical optimization techniques (MOT) in several important metrics related to academic research activity (publication frequency) and commercial activity (patenting frequency). Motivated by these findings, this article discusses some of the possi…
All swarm-intelligence-based optimization algorithms use some stochastic components to increase the diversity of solutions during the search process. Such randomization is often represented in terms of random walks. However, it is not yet clear why some randomization techniques (and thus why some algorithms) may perform better than others for a given set of problems. In this work, we analyze these randomization methods in the context of nature-inspired algorithms. We also use eagle strategy to provide basic observations and relate step sizes and search efficiency using Markov theory. Then, we …
Jadavpur University（贾达普大学）；Department of Information Technology（信息技术系）；Department of Computer Science and Engineering（计算机科学与工程系）
Metaheuristic algorithms are methods devised to efficiently solve computationally challenging optimization problems. Researchers have taken inspiration from various natural and physical processes alike to formulate meta-heuristics that have successfully provided near-optimal or optimal solutions to several engineering tasks. This chapter focuses on meta-heuristic algorithms modelled upon non-linear physical phenomena having a concrete optimization paradigm, having shown formidable exploration and exploitation abilities for such optimization problems. Specifically, this chapter focuses on sever…
A Multi-Cohort Intelligence (Multi-CI) metaheuristic algorithm in emerging socio-inspired optimization domain is proposed. The algorithm implements intra-group and inter-group learning mechanisms. It focusses on the interaction amongst different cohorts. The performance of the algorithm is validated by solving 75 unconstrained test problems with dimensions up to 30. The solutions were comparing with several recent algorithms such as Particle Swarm Optimization, Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy, Artificial Bee Colony, Self-adaptive differential evolution algorithm, Comprehensive …
Many real world problems are NP-Hard problems are a very large part of them can be represented as graph based problems. This makes graph theory a very important and prevalent field of study. In this work a new bio-inspired meta-heuristics called Green Heron Swarm Optimization (GHOSA) Algorithm is being introduced which is inspired by the fishing skills of the bird. The algorithm basically suited for graph based problems like combinatorial optimization etc. However introduction of an adaptive mathematical variation operator called Location Based Neighbour Influenced Variation (LBNIV) makes it s…
National Institute of Technology, Silchar（锡尔查尔国家理工学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；INRAE（法国国家农业、食品与环境研究院）
Nature-inspired optimization Algorithms (NIOAs) are nowadays a popular choice for community detection in social networks. Community detection problem in social network is treated as optimization problem, where the objective is to either maximize the connection within the community or minimize connections between the communities. To apply NIOAs, either of the two, or both objectives are explored. Since NIOAs mostly exploit randomness in their strategies, it is necessary to analyze their performance for specific applications. In this paper, NIOAs are analyzed on the community detection problem. …
According to the no-free-lunch theorem, there is no single meta-heuristic algorithm that can optimally solve all optimization problems. This motivates many researchers to continuously develop new optimization algorithms. In this paper, a novel nature-inspired meta-heuristic optimization algorithm called virus spread optimization (VSO) is proposed. VSO loosely mimics the spread of viruses among hosts, and can be effectively applied to solving many challenging and continuous optimization problems. We devise a new representation scheme and viral operations that are radically different from previo…
Increasing nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms are applied to solving the real-world optimization problems, as they have some advantages over the classical methods of numerical optimization. This paper has proposed a new nature-inspired metaheuristic called Whale Swarm Algorithm for function optimization, which is inspired by the whales behavior of communicating with each other via ultrasound for hunting. The proposed Whale Swarm Algorithm has been compared with several popular metaheuristic algorithms on comprehensive performance metrics. According to the experimental results, Whale Swar…
Centro de Investigación en Computación-IPN（墨西哥国家理工学院计算机研究中心）；Universidad de Guadalajara, CUCEI（瓜达拉哈拉大学电子与计算机科学中心）
In the field of image analysis, segmentation is one of the most important preprocessing steps. One way to achieve segmentation is by mean of threshold selection, where each pixel that belongs to a determined class islabeled according to the selected threshold, giving as a result pixel groups that share visual characteristics in the image. Several methods have been proposed in order to solve threshold selectionproblems; in this work, it is used the method based on the mixture of Gaussian functions to approximate the 1D histogram of a gray level image and whose parameters are calculated using th…
School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales (ADFA Campus)（新南威尔士大学信息技术与工程学院（澳国防军学院校区））
Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in understanding complex biological systems, however there have been few attempts at incorporating this knowledge into nature inspired optimization algorithms. In this paper, we present a first attempt at incorporating some of the basic structural properties of complex biological systems which are believed to be necessary preconditions for system qualities such as robustness. In particular, we focus on two important conditions missing in Evolutionary Algorithm populations; a self-organized definition of locality and interaction epistasis…
In this paper, a genetic algorithm, one of the evolutionary algorithms optimization methods, is used for the first time for the problem of finding extremal binary self-dual codes. We present a comparison of the computational times between a genetic algorithm and a linear search for different size search spaces and show that the genetic algorithm is capable of finding binary self-dual codes significantly faster than the linear search. Moreover, by employing a known matrix construction together with the genetic algorithm, we are able to obtain new binary self-dual codes of lengths 68 and 72 in a…
Bio inspiration is a branch of artificial simulation science that shows pervasive contributions to variety of engineering fields such as automate pattern recognition, systematic fault detection and applied optimization. In this paper, a new metaheuristic optimizing algorithm that is the simulation of The Great Salmon Run(TGSR) is developed. The obtained results imply on the acceptable performance of implemented method in optimization of complex non convex, multi dimensional and multi-modal problems. To prove the superiority of TGSR in both robustness and quality, it is also compared with most …
With the advent of Genome Sequencing, the field of Personalized Medicine has been revolutionized. From drug testing and studying diseases and mutations to clan genomics, studying the genome is required. However, genome sequence assembly is a very complex combinatorial optimization problem of computational biology. PSO is a popular meta-heuristic swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, we propose a new variant of PSO to address this permutation-optimization problem. PSO is integrated with the Chaos and Levy Flight (A random wa…
Multi-objectivization is a term used to describe strategies developed for optimizing single-objective problems by multi-objective algorithms. This paper focuses on multi-objectivizing the sum-of-the-parts combinatorial optimization problems, which include the traveling salesman problem, the unconstrained binary quadratic programming and other well-known combinatorial optimization problem. For a sum-of-the-parts combinatorial optimization problem, we propose to decompose its original objective into two sub-objectives with controllable correlation. Based on the decomposition method, two new mult…
Because of the stochastic nature of traffic requirement matrix, it is very difficult to get the optimal traffic distribution to minimize the delay even with adaptive routing protocol in a fixed connection network where capacity already defined for each link. Hence there is a requirement to define such a method, which could generate the optimal solution very quickly and efficiently. This paper presenting a new concept to provide the adaptive optimal traffic distribution for dynamic condition of traffic matrix using nature based intelligence methods. With the defined load and fixed capacity of l…
University of Georgia（佐治亚大学）；Franklin College of Arts and Sciences（富兰克林文理学院）；Florida International University（佛罗里达国际大学）；College of Engineering and Computing（工程与计算学院）
In [1], we have explored the theoretical aspects of feature selection and evolutionary algorithms. In this chapter, we focus on optimization algorithms for enhancing data analytic process, i.e., we propose to explore applications of nature-inspired algorithms in data science. Feature selection optimization is a hybrid approach leveraging feature selection techniques and evolutionary algorithms process to optimize the selected features. Prior works solve this problem iteratively to converge to an optimal feature subset. Feature selection optimization is a non-specific domain approach. Data scie…
Interest in multimodal function optimization is expanding rapidly since real world optimization problems often demand locating multiple optima within a search space. This article presents a new multimodal optimization algorithm named as the Collective Animal Behavior (CAB). Animal groups, such as schools of fish, flocks of birds, swarms of locusts and herds of wildebeest, exhibit a variety of behaviors including swarming about a food source, milling around a central location or migrating over large distances in aligned groups. These collective behaviors are often advantageous to groups, allowi…
This paper introduces collaborating robots which provide the possibility of enhanced task performance, high reliability and decreased. Collaborating-bots are a collection of mobile robots able to self-assemble and to self-organize in order to solve problems that cannot be solved by a single robot. These robots combine the power of swarm intelligence with the flexibility of self-reconfiguration as aggregate Collaborating-bots can dynamically change their structure to match environmental variations. Collaborating robots are more than just networks of independent agents, they are potentially reco…
