Showing papers on "Swarm intelligence published in 2014"

A comprehensive survey: artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm and applications

Abstract: Swarm intelligence (SI) is briefly defined as the collective behaviour of decentralized and self-organized swarms. The well known examples for these swarms are bird flocks, fish schools and the colony of social insects such as termites, ants and bees. In 1990s, especially two approaches based on ant colony and on fish schooling/bird flocking introduced have highly attracted the interest of researchers. Although the self-organization features are required by SI are strongly and clearly seen in honey bee colonies, unfortunately the researchers have recently started to be interested in the behaviour of these swarm systems to describe new intelligent approaches, especially from the beginning of 2000s. During a decade, several algorithms have been developed depending on different intelligent behaviours of honey bee swarms. Among those, artificial bee colony (ABC) is the one which has been most widely studied on and applied to solve the real world problems, so far. Day by day the number of researchers being interested in ABC algorithm increases rapidly. This work presents a comprehensive survey of the advances with ABC and its applications. It is hoped that this survey would be very beneficial for the researchers studying on SI, particularly ABC algorithm.

Pigeon-inspired optimization: a new swarm intelligence optimizer for air robot path planning

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a novel swarm intelligence optimizer — pigeon-inspired optimization (PIO) — and describe how this algorithm was applied to solve air robot path planning problems. Design/methodology/approach – The formulation of threat resources and objective function in air robot path planning is given. The mathematical model and detailed implementation process of PIO is presented. Comparative experiments with standard differential evolution (DE) algorithm are also conducted. Findings – The feasibility, effectiveness and robustness of the proposed PIO algorithm are shown by a series of comparative experiments with standard DE algorithm. The computational results also show that the proposed PIO algorithm can effectively improve the convergence speed, and the superiority of global search is also verified in various cases. Originality/value – In this paper, the authors first presented a PIO algorithm. In this newly presented algorithm, map and compass operator model is prese...

Spider Monkey Optimization algorithm for numerical optimization

Abstract: Swarm intelligence is one of the most promising area for the researchers in the field of numerical optimization. Researchers have developed many algorithms by simulating the swarming behavior of various creatures like ants, honey bees, fish, birds and the findings are very motivating. In this paper, a new approach for numerical optimization is proposed by modeling the foraging behavior of spider monkeys. Spider monkeys have been categorized as fission–fusion social structure based animals. The animals which follow fission–fusion social systems, split themselves from large to smaller groups and vice-versa based on the scarcity or availability of food. The proposed swarm intelligence approach is named as Spider Monkey Optimization (SMO) algorithm and can broadly be classified as an algorithm inspired by intelligent foraging behavior of fission–fusion social structure based animals.

A New Bio-inspired Algorithm: Chicken Swarm Optimization

Abstract: A new bio-inspired algorithm, Chicken Swarm Optimization (CSO), is proposed for optimization applications. Mimicking the hierarchal order in the chicken swarm and the behaviors of the chicken swarm, including roosters, hens and chicks, CSO can efficiently extract the chickens’ swarm intelligence to optimize problems. Experiments on twelve benchmark problems and a speed reducer design were conducted to compare the performance of CSO with that of other algorithms. The results show that CSO can achieve good optimization results in terms of both optimization accuracy and robustness. Future researches about CSO are finally suggested.

Artificial fish swarm algorithm: a survey of the state-of-the-art, hybridization, combinatorial and indicative applications

Abstract: AFSA (artificial fish-swarm algorithm) is one of the best methods of optimization among the swarm intelligence algorithms. This algorithm is inspired by the collective movement of the fish and their various social behaviors. Based on a series of instinctive behaviors, the fish always try to maintain their colonies and accordingly demonstrate intelligent behaviors. Searching for food, immigration and dealing with dangers all happen in a social form and interactions between all fish in a group will result in an intelligent social behavior.This algorithm has many advantages including high convergence speed, flexibility, fault tolerance and high accuracy. This paper is a review of AFSA algorithm and describes the evolution of this algorithm along with all improvements, its combination with various methods as well as its applications. There are many optimization methods which have a affinity with this method and the result of this combination will improve the performance of this method. Its disadvantages include high time complexity, lack of balance between global and local search, in addition to lack of benefiting from the experiences of group members for the next movements.

On Swarm Intelligence Inspired Self-Organized Networking: Its Bionic Mechanisms, Designing Principles and Optimization Approaches

Abstract: Inspired by swarm intelligence observed in social species, the artificial self-organized networking (SON) systems are expected to exhibit some intelligent features (e.g., flexibility, robustness, decentralized control, and self-evolution, etc.) that may have made social species so successful in the biosphere. Self-organized networks with swarm intelligence as one possible solution have attracted a lot of attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, we survey different aspects of bio-inspired mechanisms and examine various algorithms that have been applied to artificial SON systems. The existing well-known bio-inspired algorithms such as pulse-coupled oscillators (PCO)-based synchronization, ant- and/or bee-inspired cooperation and division of labor, immune systems inspired network security and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)-based multipath routing have been surveyed and compared. The main contributions of this survey include 1) providing principles and optimization approaches of variant bio-inspired algorithms, 2) surveying and comparing critical SON issues from the perspective of physical-layer, Media Access Control (MAC)-layer and network-layer operations, and 3) discussing advantages, drawbacks, and further design challenges of variant algorithms, and then identifying their new directions and applications. In consideration of the development trends of communications networks (e.g., large-scale, heterogeneity, spectrum scarcity, etc.), some open research issues, including SON designing tradeoffs, Self-X capabilities in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE)/LTE-Advanced systems, cognitive machine-to-machine (M2M) self-optimization, cross-layer design, resource scheduling, and power control, etc., are also discussed in this survey.

A quick artificial bee colony (qABC) algorithm and its performance on optimization problems

Abstract: Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm inspired by the foraging behaviour of the honey bees is one of the most popular swarm intelligence based optimization techniques. Quick artificial bee colony (qABC) is a new version of ABC algorithm which models the behaviour of onlooker bees more accurately and improves the performance of standard ABC in terms of local search ability. In this study, the qABC method is described and its performance is analysed depending on the neighbourhood radius, on a set of benchmark problems. And also some analyses about the effect of the parameter limit and colony size on qABC optimization are carried out. Moreover, the performance of qABC is compared with the state of art algorithms' performances.

A survey on the Imperialist Competitive Algorithm metaheuristic

Abstract: This is the first paper that reviews the application of Imperialist Competitive Algorithm in different engineering disciplines.The development trend of the ICA's applications is analyzed statistically in order to show its popularity.Future research opportunities and directions are discussed to motivate the future researchers. The Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA), derived from the field of human social evolution, is a component of swarm intelligence theory. It was first introduced in 2007 to deal with continuous optimization problems, but recently has been extensively applied to solve discrete optimization problems. This paper reviews the underlying ideas of how ICA emerged and its application to the engineering disciplines mainly on industrial engineering. The present study is the first ever comprehensive review on ICA, which indicates a statistically significant increase in the amount of published research on this metaheuristic algorithm, especially research addressing discrete optimization problems. Future research directions and trends are also described.

Swarm intelligence based algorithms: a critical analysis

Abstract: 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 for further research.

A gravitational search algorithm for multimodal optimization

Abstract: Gravitational search algorithm (GSA) has been recently presented as a new heuristic search algorithm with good results in real-valued and binary encoded optimization problems which is categorized in swarm intelligence optimization techniques. The aim of this article is to show that GSA is able to find multiple solutions in multimodal problems. Therefore, in this study, a new technique, namely Niche GSA (NGSA) is introduced for multimodal optimization. NGSA extends the idea of partitioning the main population (swarm) of masses into smaller sub-swarms and also preserving them by introducing three strategies: a K-nearest neighbors (K-NN) strategy, an elitism strategy and modification of active gravitational mass formulation. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm several experiments are performed. The results are compared with those of state-of-the-art niching algorithms. The experimental results confirm the efficiency and effectiveness of the NGSA in finding multiple optima

Improved bat algorithm applied to multilevel image thresholding.

Abstract: Multilevel image thresholding is a very important image processing technique that is used as a basis for image segmentation and further higher level processing. However, the required computational time for exhaustive search grows exponentially with the number of desired thresholds. Swarm intelligence metaheuristics are well known as successful and efficient optimization methods for intractable problems. In this paper, we adjusted one of the latest swarm intelligence algorithms, the bat algorithm, for the multilevel image thresholding problem. The results of testing on standard benchmark images show that the bat algorithm is comparable with other state-of-the-art algorithms. We improved standard bat algorithm, where our modifications add some elements from the differential evolution and from the artificial bee colony algorithm. Our new proposed improved bat algorithm proved to be better than five other state-of-the-art algorithms, improving quality of results in all cases and significantly improving convergence speed.

Firefly algorithm for cardinality constrained mean-variance portfolio optimization problem with entropy diversity constraint.

Abstract: Portfolio optimization (selection) problem is an important and hard optimization problem that, with the addition of necessary realistic constraints, becomes computationally intractable. Nature-inspired metaheuristics are appropriate for solving such problems; however, literature review shows that there are very few applications of nature-inspired metaheuristics to portfolio optimization problem. This is especially true for swarm intelligence algorithms which represent the newer branch of nature-inspired algorithms. No application of any swarm intelligence metaheuristics to cardinality constrained mean-variance (CCMV) portfolio problem with entropy constraint was found in the literature. This paper introduces modified firefly algorithm (FA) for the CCMV portfolio model with entropy constraint. Firefly algorithm is one of the latest, very successful swarm intelligence algorithm; however, it exhibits some deficiencies when applied to constrained problems. To overcome lack of exploration power during early iterations, we modified the algorithm and tested it on standard portfolio benchmark data sets used in the literature. Our proposed modified firefly algorithm proved to be better than other state-of-the-art algorithms, while introduction of entropy diversity constraint further improved results.

The Art of Artificial Evolution: A Handbook on Evolutionary Art and Music

Abstract: This comprehensive book gives an up-to-date survey of the relevant bioinspired computing research fields such as evolutionary computation, artificial life, swarm intelligence and ant colony algorithms and examines applications in art, music and design. The editors and contributors are researchers and artists with deep experience of the related science, tools and applications, and the book includes overviews of historical developments and future perspectives.

Self-organized task allocation to sequentially interdependent tasks in swarm robotics

Abstract: In this article we present a self-organized method for allocating the individuals of a robot swarm to tasks that are sequentially interdependent. Tasks that are sequentially interdependent are common in natural and artificial systems. The proposed method does neither rely on global knowledge nor centralized components. Moreover, it does not require the robots to communicate. The method is based on the delay experienced by the robots working on one subtask when waiting for input from another subtask. We explore the capabilities of the method in different simulated environments. Additionally, we evaluate the method in a proof-of-concept experiment using real robots. We show that the method allows a swarm to reach a near-optimal allocation in the studied environments, can easily be transferred to a real robot setting, and is adaptive to changes in the properties of the tasks such as their duration. Finally, we show that the ideal setting of the parameters of the method does not depend on the properties of the environment.

A comparative study of the improvement of performance using a PSO modified by ACO applied to TSP

Abstract: Swarm-inspired optimization has become very popular in recent years. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms have attracted the interest of researchers due to their simplicity, effectiveness and efficiency in solving complex optimization problems. Both ACO and PSO were successfully applied for solving the traveling salesman problem (TSP). Performance of the conventional PSO algorithm for small problems with moderate dimensions and search space is very satisfactory. As the search, space gets more complex, conventional approaches tend to offer poor solutions. This paper presents a novel approach by introducing a PSO, which is modified by the ACO algorithm to improve the performance. The new hybrid method (PSO-ACO) is validated using the TSP benchmarks and the empirical results considering the completion time and the best length, illustrate that the proposed method is efficient.

Cuckoo Search and Firefly Algorithm Applied to Multilevel Image Thresholding

Abstract: Multilevel image thresholding is a technique widely used in image processing, most often for segmentation. Exhaustive search is computationally prohibitively expensive since the number of possible thresholds to be examined grows exponentially with the number of desirable thresholds. Swarm intelligence metaheuristics have been used successfully for such hard optimization problems. In this chapter we investigate performance of two relatively new swarm intelligence algorithms, cuckoo search and firefly algorithm, applied to multilevel image thresholding. Particle swarm optimization and differential evolution algorithms have also been implemented for comparison. Two different objective functions, Kapur’s maximum entropy thresholding function and multi Otsu between-class variance, were used on standard benchmark images with known optima from exhaustive search (up to five threshold points). Results show that both, cuckoo search and firefly algorithm, exhibit superior performance and robustness.

MRI breast cancer diagnosis hybrid approach using adaptive ant-based segmentation and multilayer perceptron neural networks classifier

Abstract: This article introduces a hybrid approach that combines the advantages of fuzzy sets, ant-based clustering and multilayer perceptron neural networks (MLPNN) classifier, in conjunction with statistical-based feature extraction technique. An application of breast cancer MRI imaging has been chosen and hybridization system has been applied to see their ability and accuracy to classify the breast cancer images into two outcomes: Benign or Malignant. The introduced hybrid system starts with an algorithm based on type-II fuzzy sets to enhance the contrast of the input images. This is followed by an improved version of the classical ant-based clustering algorithm, called adaptive ant-based clustering to identify target objects through an optimization methodology that maintains the optimum result during iterations. Then, more than twenty statistical-based features are extracted and normalized. Finally, a MLPNN classifier was employed to evaluate the ability of the lesion descriptors for discrimination of different regions of interest to determine whether the cancer is Benign or Malignant. To evaluate the performance of presented approach, we present tests on different breast MRI images. The experimental results obtained, show that the adaptive ant-based segmentation is superior to the classical ant-based clustering technique and the overall accuracy offered by the employed hybrid technique confirm that the effectiveness and performance of the proposed hybrid system is high.

A new bio-inspired algorithm: Chicken swarm optimization

Abstract: A new bio-inspired algorithm, Chicken Swarm Optimization (CSO), is proposed for optimization applications. Mimicking the hierarchal order in the chicken swarm and the behaviors of the chicken swarm, including roosters, hens and chicks, CSO can efficiently extract the chickens’ swarm intelligence to optimize problems. Experiments on twelve benchmark problems and a speed reducer design were conducted to compare the performance of CSO with that of other algorithms. The results show that CSO can achieve good optimization results in terms of both optimization accuracy and robustness. Future researches about CSO are finally suggested.

Population Diversity Maintenance In Brain Storm Optimization Algorithm

Abstract: The convergence and divergence are two common phenomena in swarm intelligence. To obtain good search results, the algorithm should have a balance on convergence and divergence. The premature convergence happens partially due to the solutions getting clustered together, and not diverging again. The brain storm optimization (BSO), which is a young and promising algorithm in swarm intelligence, is based on the collective behavior of human being, that is, the brainstorming process. The convergence strategy is utilized in BSO algorithm to exploit search areas may contain good solutions. The new solutions are generated by divergence strategy to explore new search areas. Premature convergence also happens in the BSO algorithm. The solutions get clustered after a few iterations, which indicate that the population diversity decreases quickly during the search. A definition of population diversity in BSO algorithm is introduced in this paper to measure the change of solutions’ distribution. The algorithm’s exploration and exploitation ability can be measured based on the change of population diversity. Different kinds of partial reinitialization strategies are utilized to improve the population diversity in BSO algorithm. The experimental results show that the performance of the BSO is improved by part of solutions re-initialization strategies.

A simultaneous transit network design and frequency setting: Computing with bees

Abstract: The transit network design problem belongs to the class of hard combinatorial optimization problem, whose optimal solution is not easy to find out. We consider in this paper the transit network design problem in a way that we simultaneously determine the links to be included in the transit network, assemble chosen links into bus routes, and determine bus frequency on each of the designed routes. Our approach to the transit network design problem is based on the Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) metaheuristic. The BCO algorithm is a stochastic, random-search technique that belongs to the class of population-based algorithms. This technique uses a similarity among the way in which bees in nature look for food, and the way in which optimization algorithms search for an optimum of a combinatorial optimization problem. The numerical experiments are performed on known benchmark problems. We clearly show that our approach, based on the BCO algorithm is competitive with the other approaches in the literature and that can generate high-quality solutions.