Memetic search in artificial bee colony algorithm

Artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm is relatively a simple and recent population based probabilistic approach for global optimization. ABC has been outperformed over some Nature Inspired Algorithms (NIAs) when tested over benchmark as well as real world optimization problems. The solution search equation of ABC is significantly influenced by a random quantity which helps in exploration at the cost of exploitation of the search space. In the solution search equation of ABC, there is a enough chance to skip the true solution due to large step size. In order to balance between diversity and convergence capability of the ABC, a new local search phase is integrated with the basic ABC to exploit the search space identified by the best individual in the swarm. In the proposed phase, ABC works as a local search algorithm in which, the step size that is required to update the best solution, is controlled by Golden Section Search approach. The proposed strategy is named as Memetic ABC (MeABC). In MeABC, new solutions are generated around the best solution and it helps to enhance the exploitation capability of ABC. MeABC is established as a modified ABC algorithm through experiments over 20 test problems of different complexities and 4 well known engineering optimization problems.     

A modified artificial bee colony algorithm

Artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) is a relatively new optimization technique which has been shown to be competitive to other population-based algorithms. However, there is still an insufficiency in ABC regarding its solution search equation, which is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. Inspired by differential evolution (DE), we propose an improved solution search equation, which is based on that the bee searches only around the best solution of the previous iteration to improve the exploitation. Then, in order to make full use of and balance the exploration of the solution search equation of ABC and the exploitation of the proposed solution search equation, we introduce a selective probability P and get the new search mechanism. In addition, to enhance the global convergence, when producing the initial population, both chaotic systems and opposition-based learning methods are employed. The new search mechanism together with the proposed initialization makes up the modified ABC (MABC for short), which excludes the probabilistic selection scheme and scout bee phase. Experiments are conducted on a set of 28 benchmark functions. The results demonstrate good performance of MABC in solving complex numerical optimization problems when compared with two ABC-based algorithms.     

改进的人工蜂群算法在函数优化问题中的应用

人工蜂群算法是近年来新提出的一种优化算法。针对标准人工蜂群算法的局部搜索能力差,精度低的缺点,提出了一个改进的人工蜂群算法,利用全局最优解和个体极值的信息来改进人工蜂群算法中的搜索模式,并引入异步变化学习因子,保持全局搜索和局部搜索的平衡。将改进的人工蜂群算法在函数优化问题上进行测试,结果表明改进的人工蜂群算法优于原算法。     

A novel artificial bee colony algorithm with Powell's method

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new optimization technique which has been shown to be competitive to other population-based algorithms. However, there is still an insufficiency in ABC regarding its solution search equation, which is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. To address this concerning issue, we first propose a modified search equation which is applied to generate a candidate solution in the onlookers phase to improve the search ability of ABC. Further, we use the Powell's method as a local search tool to enhance the exploitation of the algorithm. The new algorithm is tested on 22 unconstrained benchmark functions and 13 constrained benchmark functions, and are compared with some other ABCs and several state-of-the-art algorithms. The comparisons show that the proposed algorithm offers the highest solution quality, fastest global convergence, and strongest robustness among all the contenders on almost all test functions.     

Lévy flight artificial bee colony algorithm

Artificial bee colony (ABC) optimisation algorithm is a relatively simple and recent population-based probabilistic approach for global optimisation. The solution search equation of ABC is significantly influenced by a random quantity which helps in exploration at the cost of exploitation of the search space. In the ABC, there is a high chance to skip the true solution due to its large step sizes. In order to balance between diversity and convergence in the ABC, a Lévy flight inspired search strategy is proposed and integrated with ABC. The proposed strategy is named as Lévy Flight ABC (LFABC) has both the local and global search capability simultaneously and can be achieved by tuning the Lévy flight parameters and thus automatically tuning the step sizes. In the LFABC, new solutions are generated around the best solution and it helps to enhance the exploitation capability of ABC. Furthermore, to improve the exploration capability, the numbers of scout bees are increased. The experiments on 20 test problems of different complexities and five real-world engineering optimisation problems show that the proposed strategy outperforms the basic ABC and recent variants of ABC, namely, Gbest-guided ABC, best-so-far ABC and modified ABC in most of the experiments.     

An adaptive artificial bee colony algorithm based on objective function value information

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a novel biological-inspired optimization algorithm, which has many advantages compared with other optimization algorithm, such as less control parameters, great global optimization ability and easy to carry out. It has proven to be more effective than some evolutionary algorithms (EAs), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evolution (DE) when testing on both benchmark functions and real issues. ABC, however, its solution search equation is poor at exploitation. For overcoming this insufficiency, two new solution search equations are proposed in this paper. They apply random solutions to take the place of the current solution as base vector in order to get more useful information. Exploitation is further improved on the basis of enhancing exploration by utilizing the information of the current best solution. In addition, the information of objective function value is introduced, which makes it possible to adjust the step-size adaptively. Owing to their respective characteristics, the new solution search equations are combined to construct an adaptive algorithm called MTABC. The methods our proposed balance the exploration and exploitation of ABC without forcing severe extra overhead in respect of function evaluations. The performance of the MTABC algorithm is extensively judged on a set of 20 basic functions and a set of 10 shifted or rotated functions, and is compared favorably with other improved ABCs and several state-of-the-art algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a higher convergence speed and better search ability for almost all functions.     

自扰动人工蜂群算法

人工蜂群(Artificial Bee Colony,ABC)算法是一种模仿蜂群寻找蜜源的新型算法,因具有参数简单、灵活性强等优点而被广泛用于解决工程问题。但该算法在早熟、收敛速度慢和个体越界等缺点。为此,提出一种自扰动人工蜂群算法(Novel Artificial Bee Algorithm with Adaptive Disturbance,IGABC)。该算法采用轴对称策略处理蜂群中的越界个体,提高了算法的搜索效率。通过改进全局搜索方程的结构,同时加入带阈值的线性递增策略,提出一种全新的自适应搜索方程。自适应搜索方程提高了算法的收敛精度并加快了速度。为了获得更好的全局最优解,提出一种自扰动方法对全局最优解进行扰动。选取18个基准测试函数以及近4年提出的6个改进ABC算法进行对比实验,结果表明,该算法在收敛速度和精度上均有较大的优势,尤其在处理Rosenbrock等很难寻优的复杂函数时,收敛精度提高了16个数量级。     

An Artificial Bee Colony algorithm with guide of global & local optima and asynchronous scaling factors for numerical optimization

Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is a wildly used optimization algorithm. However, ABC is excellent in exploration but poor in exploitation. To improve the convergence performance of ABC and establish a better searching mechanism for the global optimum, an improved ABC algorithm is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the proposed algorithm integrates the information of previous best solution into the search equation for employed bees and global best solution into the update equation for onlooker bees to improve the exploitation. Secondly, for a better balance between the exploration and exploitation of search, an S-type adaptive scaling factors are introduced in employed bees’ search equation. Furthermore, the searching policy of scout bees is modified. The scout bees need update food source in each cycle in order to increase diversity and stochasticity of the bees and mitigate stagnation problem. Finally, the improved algorithms is compared with other two improved ABCs and three recent algorithms on a set of classical benchmark functions. The experimental results show that the our proposed algorithm is effective and robust and outperform than other algorithms.     

增强开发能力的改进人工蜂群算法

为解决人工蜂群（ABC）算法收敛速度慢、精度不高和易于陷入局部最优等问题，提出一种增强开发能力的改进人工蜂群算法。一方面，将得出的最优解以两种方式直接引入雇佣蜂搜索公式中，通过最优解指导雇佣蜂的邻域搜索行为，以增强算法的开发或局部搜索能力；另一方面，在旁观蜂搜索公式中结合当前解及其随机邻域进行搜索，以改善算法的全局优化能力。对多个常用基准测试函数的仿真实验结果表明，在收敛速度、精度和全局优化能力等方面，所提算法总体上优于其他类似的ABC算法（例如ABC/best）和集成多种搜索策略的ABC算法（例如ABCVSS（ABC algorithm with Variable Search Strategy）和ABCMSSCE（ABC algorithm with Multi-Search Strategy Cooperative Evolutionary））。     

A recombination-based hybridization of particle swarm optimization and artificial bee colony algorithm for continuous optimization problems

This paper presents a hybridization of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and artificial bee colony (ABC) approaches, based on recombination procedure. The PSO and ABC are population-based iterative methods. While the PSO directly uses the global best solution of the population to determine new positions for the particles at the each iteration, agents (employed, onlooker and scout bees) of the ABC do not directly use this information but the global best solution in the ABC is stored at the each iteration. The global best solutions obtained by the PSO and ABC are used for recombination, and the solution obtained from this recombination is given to the populations of the PSO and ABC as the global best and neighbor food source for onlooker bees, respectively. Information flow between particle swarm and bee colony helps increase global and local search abilities of the hybrid approach which is referred to as Hybrid approach based on Particle swarm optimization and Artificial bee colony algorithm, HPA for short. In order to test the performance of the HPA algorithm, this study utilizes twelve basic numerical benchmark functions in addition to CEC2005 composite functions and an energy demand estimation problem. The experimental results obtained by the HPA are compared with those of the PSO and ABC. The performance of the HPA is also compared with that of other hybrid methods based on the PSO and ABC. The experimental results show that the HPA algorithm is an alternative and competitive optimizer for continuous optimization problems.     

具有自适应全局最优引导快速搜索策略的人工蜂群算法

针对人工蜂群算法存在开发与探索能力不平衡的缺点,提出了具有自适应全局最优引导快速搜索策略的改进算法.在该策略中,首先采蜜蜂利用自适应搜索方程平衡了不同搜索方法的探索和开发能力;其次跟随蜂利用全局最优引导邻域搜索方程对蜜源进行精细化搜索,以提高其收敛精度和全局搜索能力.14个标准测试函数的仿真结果表明,相比其他算法,所提出的改进算法有效平衡了算法的开发与探索能力,并提高了其最优解的精度及收敛速度.     

A grey artificial bee colony algorithm

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a very popular population-based algorithm. Unfortunately, there exists a shortcoming of slow convergence rate, which partly results from random choices of neighbor individuals regarding its solution search equation. A novel scheme for the choice of neighbors is introduced based on grey relational degrees between a current individual and its neighbors to overcome the insufficiency. Then, the chosen neighbor is used to guide the search process. Additionally, inspired by differential evolution, a solution search equation called ABC/rand/2 is employed to balance the previous exploitation and a new perturbation scheme is also employed. What is more, solution search equations using information of the best individual, an opposition-based learning method and a chaotic initialization technique are also integrated into the proposed algorithm called grey artificial bee colony algorithm (GABC for short). Subsequently, the effectiveness and efficiency of GABC are validated on a test suite composed of fifty-seven benchmark functions. Furthermore, it is also compared with a few state-of-the-art algorithms. The related experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of GABC.     

Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based on Adaptive Search Equation and Extended Memory

From the perspective of psychology, a modified artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC, for short) based on adaptive search equation and extended memory (ABCEM, for short) for global optimization is proposed in this paper. In the proposed ABCEM algorithm, an extended memory factor is introduced into store employed bees’ and onlooker bees’ historical information comprising recent food sources, personal best food sources, and global best food sources, and the solution search equation for the employed bees is equipped with adaptive ability. Moreover, a parameter is employed to describe the importance of the extended memory. Furthermore, the extended memory is added to two solution search equations for the employed bees and the onlookers to improve the quality of food source. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, experiments are conducted on a set of numerical benchmark functions. The results show that the proposed algorithm can balance the exploration and exploitation, and can improve the accuracy of optima solutions and convergence speed compared with other current improved ABCs for global optimization in most of the tested functions.     

An improved artificial bee colony algorithm based on the strategy of global reconnaissance

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a recently introduced swarm intelligence optimization algorithm based on the foraging behavior of a honeybee colony. However, many problems are encountered in the ABC algorithm, such as premature convergence and low solution precision. Moreover, it can easily become stuck at local optima. The scout bees start to search for food sources randomly and then they share nectar information with other bees. Thus, this paper proposes a global reconnaissance foraging swarm optimization algorithm that mimics the intelligent foraging behavior of scouts in nature. First, under the new scouting search strategies, the scouts conduct global reconnaissance around the assigned subspace, which is effective to avoid premature convergence and local optima. Second, the scouts guide other bees to search in the neighborhood by applying heuristic information about global reconnaissance. The cooperation between the honeybees will contribute to the improvement of optimization performance and solution precision. Finally, the prediction and selection mechanism is adopted to further modify the search strategies of the employed bees and onlookers. Therefore, the search performance in the neighborhood of the local optimal solution is enhanced. The experimental results conducted on 52 typical test functions show that the proposed algorithm is more effective in avoiding premature convergence and improving solution precision compared with some other ABCs and several state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, this algorithm is suitable for optimizing high-dimensional space optimization problems, with very satisfactory outcomes.     

多选择背包问题的人工蜂群算法*

多选择背包问题是组合优化中的NP难题之一,采用一种新的智能优化算法——人工蜂群算法进行求解。该算法通过雇佣蜂、跟随蜂和侦察蜂的局部寻优来实现全局最优。基于算法实现的核心思想,用MATLAB编程实现,对参考文献的算例进行仿真测试。与其他算法进行了比较,获得了满意的结果。这说明了算法在解决该问题上的可行性与有效性,拓展了人工蜂群算法的应用领域。     

CCSA: Conscious Neighborhood-based Crow Search Algorithm for Solving Global Optimization Problems

In this paper, a conscious neighborhood-based crow search algorithm (CCSA) is proposed for solving global optimization and engineering design problems. It is a successful improvement to tackle the imbalance search strategy and premature convergence problems of the crow search algorithm. CCSA introduces three new search strategies called neighborhood-based local search (NLS), non-neighborhood based global search (NGS) and wandering around based search (WAS) in order to improve the movement of crows in different search spaces. Moreover, a neighborhood concept is defined to select the movement strategy between NLS and NGS consciously, which enhances the balance between local and global search. The proposed CCSA is evaluated on several benchmark functions and four applied problems of engineering design. In all experiments, CCSA is compared by other state-of-the-art swarm intelligence algorithms: CSA, BA, CLPSO, GWO, EEGWO, WOA, KH, ABC, GABC, and Best-so-far ABC. The experimental and statistical results show that CCSA is very competitive especially for large-scale optimization problems, and it is significantly superior to the compared algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm also finds the best optimal solution for the applied problems of engineering design.     

基于正交实验设计的人工蜂群算法

人工蜂群算法是近年来提出的较为新颖的全局优化算法,已成功地应用于解决不同类型的实际优化问题.然而在该算法及相关的改进算法中,侦察蜂通常采用随机初始化的方法来生成新食物源.虽然这种方法较为简单,但易造成侦察蜂搜索经验的丢失.从算法搜索过程的内在机制出发,提出采用正交实验设计的方式来生成新的食物源,使得侦察蜂能够同时保存被放弃的食物源和全局最优解在不同维度上的有益信息,提高算法的搜索效率.在16个典型的测试函数上进行了一系列实验验证,实验结果表明:1) 该方法能够在基本不增加算法运行时间的情况下,显著地提高人工蜂群算法的求解精度和收敛速度;2) 与3种典型的变异方法相比,有更好的整体性能;3) 可作为提高其他改进人工蜂群算法性能的通用框架,具备有良好的普适性.     

A particle swarm inspired cuckoo search algorithm for real parameter optimization

The cuckoo search algorithm (CS) is a simple and effective global optimization algorithm. It has been successfully applied to solve a wide range of real-world optimization problems. In this paper, inspired by the particle swarm optimization (PSO), the proposed algorithm uses the best individuals among the entire population to enhance the convergence rate of the standard cuckoo search algorithm. While the PSO directly uses the global best solution of the population to determine new positions for the particles at the each iteration, agents of the CS do not directly use this information but the global best solution in the CS is stored at the each iteration. The global best solutions are used to add into the Information flow between the nest helps increase global and local search abilities of the new approach. Therefore, in the first component, the neighborhood information is added into the new population to enhance the diversity of the algorithm. In the second component, two new search strategies are used to balance the exploitation and exploration of the algorithm through a random probability rule. In other aspect, our algorithm has a very simple structure and thus is easy to implement. To verify the performance of PSCS, 30 benchmark functions chosen from literature are employed. The results show that the proposed PSCS algorithm clearly outperforms the basic CS and PSO algorithm. Compared with some evolution algorithms (CLPSO, CMA-ES, GL-25, DE, OXDE, ABC, GOABC, FA, FPA, CoDE, BA, BSA, BDS and SDS) from literature, experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm performs better than, or at least comparable to state-of-the-art approaches from literature when considering the quality of the solution obtained. In the last part, experiments have been conducted on two real-world optimization problems including the spread spectrum radar poly-phase code design problem and the chaotic system. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is very effective.     

量子位Bloch坐标的量子人工蜂群优化算法

为了改善人工蜂群(ABC)算法在解决多变量优化问题时存在的收敛速度较慢、容易陷入局部最优的不足,结合量子理论和人工蜂群算法提出一种新的量子优化算法。算法首先采用量子位Bloch坐标对蜂群算法中食物源进行编码,扩展了全局最优解的数量,提高了蜂群算法获得全局最优解的概率;然后用量子旋转门实现搜索过程中的食物源更新。对于量子旋转门的转角关系的确定,提出了一种新的方法。从理论上证明了蜂群算法在Bloch球面每次以等面积搜索时,量子旋转门的两个旋转相位大小近似于反比例关系,避免了固定相位旋转的不均等性,使得搜索呈现规律性。在典型函数优化问题的实验中,所提算法在搜索能力和优化效率两个方面优于普通量子人工蜂群(QABC)算法和单一人工蜂群算法。     

Improved cat swarm optimization algorithm for solving global optimization problems and its application to clustering

This paper presents a cat swarm optimization (CSO) algorithm for solving global optimization problems. In CSO algorithm, some modifications are incorporated to improve its performance and balance between global and local search. In tracing mode of the CSO algorithm, a new search equation is proposed to guide the search toward a global optimal solution. A local search method is incorporated to improve the quality of solution and overcome the local optima problem. The proposed algorithm is named as Improved CSO (ICSO) and the performance of the ICSO algorithm is tested on twelve benchmark test functions. These test functions are widely used to evaluate the performance of new optimization algorithms. The experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm gives better results than the other algorithms. In addition, the proposed ICSO algorithm is also applied for solving the clustering problems. The performance of the ICSO algorithm is evaluated on five datasets taken from the UCI repository. The simulation results show that ICSO-based clustering algorithm gives better performance than other existing clustering algorithms.