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The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a new branch of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) that is inspired by the collective foraging behavior of real honey bee colonies. Due to its foraging model and its solution search equation, ABC generally performs well in exploration but badly in exploitation. To address this concerning issue and obtain a good balance between exploration and exploitation, in this paper, we mainly introduce into the ABC an adaptive method for the population size (AMPS). AMPS is inspired by the natural principle that the size of a population is affected by the availability of food resources. When food resources are abundant, a population tends to expand; otherwise, a decrease in the availability of food resources leads to a shrinkage in the population size. Specifically, when the algorithm performs well in exploration, AMPS will shrink the population to enhance exploitation by periodically removing some inferior solutions that have low success rates. In contrast, AMPS will enlarge the population to improve exploration by introducing some reserved solutions. Furthermore, to make AMPS perform better, we design a new solution search equation for employed bees and onlooker bees. Moreover, we also improve the probability model of the onlooker bees. By embedding our three proposed algorithmic components into ABC, we propose a novel ABC variant, called APABC. To demonstrate the performance of APABC, we compare APABC with some state-of-the-art ABC variants and some other non-ABC methods on 22 scalable benchmark functions and 30 CEC2014 test functions. The simulation results show that APABC is better than or at least competitive with the competitors in terms of its solution quality, robustness and convergence speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO), inspired by the science of biogeography, is a novel population-based Evolutionary Algorithm (EA). For optimization problems, BBO builds the matching mathematical model of the organism distribution. In this evolutionary mechanism, species migrating among islands can be considered as the information transition among different solutions represented by habitats. Solutions are reassembled according to migration rates. However, so far, the migration models are generally designed by empirical studies. This leads to immature conclusions that are unreliable. To complete the previous works, this paper investigates transition probability matrices of BBO to clarify that the transition probability of median number of species is not the only determinant factor to influence performance. The impact of migration rates on BBO is mathematically discussed, which is helpful to design migration models. Using numerical simulations, the BBO and several other classical evolutionary algorithms are compared. The simulations also comprehensively explain the effect of the BBO’s properties on its performance including dimension, population size, and migration models. The results validate the theoretical analysis in this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the past decades, different evolutionary optimization methodologies have been proposed by scholars and exploited by practitioners, in a wide range of applications. Each paradigm shows distinctive features, typical advantages, and characteristic disadvantages; however, one single problem is shared by almost all of them: the “lack of speciation”. While natural selection favors variations toward greater divergence, in artificial evolution candidate solutions do homologize. Many authors argued that promoting diversity would be beneficial in evolutionary optimization processes, and that it could help avoiding premature convergence on sub-optimal solutions. The paper surveys the research in this area up to mid 2010s, it re-orders and re-interprets different methodologies into a single framework, and proposes a novel three-axis taxonomy. Its goal is to provide the reader with a unifying view of the many contributions in this important corpus, allowing comparisons and informed choices. Characteristics of the different techniques are discussed, and similarities are highlighted; practical ways to measure and promote diversity are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic flexible job shop scheduling is of significant importance to the implementation of real-world manufacturing systems. In order to capture the dynamic and multi-objective nature of flexible job shop scheduling, and provide different trade-offs among objectives, this paper develops a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA)-based proactive–reactive method. The novelty of our method is that it is able to handle multiple objectives including efficiency and stability simultaneously, adapt to the new environment quickly by incorporating heuristic dynamic optimization strategies, and deal with two scheduling policies of machine assignment and operation sequencing together. Besides, a new mathematical model for the multi-objective dynamic flexible job shop scheduling problem (MODFJSSP) is constructed. With the aim of selecting one solution that fits into the decision maker’s preferences from the trade-off solution set found by MOEA, a dynamic decision making procedure is designed. Experimental results in a simulated dynamic flexible job shop show that our method can achieve much better performances than combinations of existing scheduling rules. Three MOEA-based rescheduling methods are compared. The modified ɛ -MOEA has the best overall performance in dynamic environments, and its computational time is much less than two others (i.e., NSGA-II and SPEA2). Utilities of introducing the stability objective, heuristic initialization strategies and the decision making approach are also validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous theoretical analyses of evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) mostly focus on obtaining -approximations of Pareto fronts. However, in practical applications, an appropriate value of is critical but sometimes, for a multi-objective optimization problem (MOP) with unknown attributes, difficult to determine. In this paper, we propose a new definition for the finite representation of the Pareto front—the adaptive Pareto front, which can automatically accommodate the Pareto front. Accordingly, it is more practical to take the adaptive Pareto front, or its -approximation (termed the -adaptive Pareto front) as the goal of an EMO algorithm. We then perform a runtime analysis of a ( ) multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (( ) MOEA) for three MOPs, including a discrete MOP with a polynomial Pareto front (denoted as a polynomial DMOP), a discrete MOP with an exponential Pareto front (denoted as an exponential DMOP) and a simple continuous two-objective optimization problem (SCTOP). By employing an estimator-based update strategy in the ( ) MOEA, we show that (1) for the polynomial DMOP, the whole Pareto front can be obtained in the expected polynomial runtime by setting the population size equal to the number of Pareto vectors; (2) for the exponential DMOP, the expected polynomial runtime can be obtained by keeping increasing in the same order as that of the problem size n; and (3) the diversity mechanism guarantees that in the expected polynomial runtime the MOEA can obtain an -adaptive Pareto front of SCTOP for any given precision . Theoretical studies and numerical comparisons with NSGA-II demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed MOEA and should be viewed as an important step toward understanding the mechanisms of MOEAs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper proposes a novel and unconventional Memetic Computing approach for solving continuous optimization problems characterized by memory limitations. The proposed algorithm, unlike employing an explorative evolutionary framework and a set of local search algorithms, employs multiple exploitative search within the main framework and performs a multiple step global search by means of a randomized perturbation of the virtual population corresponding to a periodical randomization of the search for the exploitative operators. The proposed Memetic Computing approach is based on a populationless (compact) evolutionary framework which, instead of processing a population of solutions, handles its statistical model. This evolutionary framework is based on a Differential Evolution which cooperatively employs two exploitative search operators: the first is based on a standard Differential Evolution mutation and exponential crossover, and the second is the trigonometric mutation. These two search operators have an exploitative action on the algorithmic framework and thus contribute to the rapid convergence of the virtual population towards promising candidate solutions. The action of these search operators is counterbalanced by a periodical stochastic perturbation of the virtual population, which has the role of “disturbing” the excessively exploitative action of the framework and thus inhibits its premature convergence. The proposed algorithm, namely Disturbed Exploitation compact Differential Evolution, is a simple and memory-wise cheap structure that makes use of the Memetic Computing paradigm in order to solve complex optimization problems. The proposed approach has been tested on a set of various test problems and compared with state-of-the-art compact algorithms and with some modern population based meta-heuristics. Numerical results show that Disturbed Exploitation compact Differential Evolution significantly outperforms all the other compact algorithms present in literature and reaches a competitive performance with respect to modern population algorithms, including some memetic approaches and complex modern Differential Evolution based algorithms. In order to show the potential of the proposed approach in real-world applications, Disturbed Exploitation compact Differential Evolution has been implemented for performing the control of a space robot by simulating the implementation within the robot micro-controller. Numerical results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm with respect to other modern compact algorithms present in literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Motivated by the migration mechanisms of ecosystems, various extensions to biogeography-based optimization (BBO) are proposed here. As a global optimization method, BBO is an original algorithm based on the mathematical model of organism distribution in biological systems. BBO is an evolutionary process that achieves information sharing by biogeography-based migration operators. In BBO, habitats represent candidate problem solutions, and species migration represents the sharing of features between candidate solutions according to the fitness of the habitats. This paper generalizes equilibrium species count results in biogeography theory, explores the behavior of six different migration models in BBO, and investigates performance through 23 benchmark functions with a wide range of dimensions and diverse complexities. The performance study shows that sinusoidal migration curves provide the best performance among the six different models that we explored. In addition, comparison with other biology-based optimization algorithms is investigated, and the influence of the population size, problem dimension, mutation rate, and maximum migration rate of BBO are also studied. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]