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Optimization problems are prevalent in almost all areas and hence optimization algorithms are crucial for a myriad of real-world applications. Deterministic optimization algorithms tend to be computationally costly and time-consuming. Hence, heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms are more favoured as they provide near-optimal solutions in an acceptable amount of time. Swarm intelligence algorithms are being increasingly used for optimization problems owing to their simplicity and good performance. The Dragonfly Algorithm (DA) is one which is inspired by the swarming behaviours of dragonflies, and it has been proven to have a superior performance than other algorithms in multiple applications. Hence, it is worth considering its application to the traveling salesman problem which is a predominant discrete optimization problem. The original DA is only suitable for solving continuous optimization problems and, although there is a binary version of the algorithm, it is not easily adapted for solving discrete optimization problems like TSP. We have previously proposed a discrete adapted DA algorithm suitable for TSP. However, it has low effectiveness, and it has not been used for large TSP problems. In this paper, we propose an optimized discrete adapted DA by using the steepest ascent hill climbing algorithm as a local search. The algorithm is applied to a TSP problem modelling a package delivery system in the Kuala Lumpur area and to benchmark TSP problems, and it is found to have a higher effectiveness than the discrete adapted DA and some other swarm intelligence algorithms. It also has a higher efficiency than the discrete adapted DA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces a new approach to enhance optimization algorithms when solving the piecewise linearization problem of a given function. Eight swarm intelligence algorithms were selected to be experimentally compared. The problem is represented by the calculation of the distance between the original function and the estimation from the piecewise linear function. Here, the piecewise linearization of 2D functions is studied. Each of the employed swarm intelligence algorithms is enhanced by a newly proposed automatic detection of the number of piecewise linear parts that determine the discretization points to calculate the distance between the original and piecewise linear function. The original algorithms and their enhanced variants are compared on several examples of piecewise linearization problems. The results show that the enhanced approach performs sufficiently better when it creates a very promising approximation of functions. Moreover, the degree of precision is slightly decreased by the focus on the speed of the optimization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel population-based bio-inspired meta-heuristic optimization algorithm, called Blood Coagulation Algorithm (BCA). BCA derives inspiration from the process of blood coagulation in the human body. The underlying concepts and ideas behind the proposed algorithm are the cooperative behavior of thrombocytes and their intelligent strategy of clot formation. These behaviors are modeled and utilized to underscore intensification and diversification in a given search space. A comparison with various state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithms over a test suite of 23 renowned benchmark functions reflects the efficiency of BCA. An extensive investigation is conducted to analyze the performance, convergence behavior and computational complexity of BCA. The comparative study and statistical test analysis demonstrate that BCA offers very competitive and statistically significant results compared to other eminent meta-heuristic algorithms. Experimental results also show the consistent performance of BCA in high dimensional search spaces. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of BCA on real-world applications by solving several real-life engineering problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swarm intelligence techniques have been created to respond to theoretical and practical global optimization problems. This paper puts forward an enhanced version of the firefly algorithm that corrects the acknowledged drawbacks of the original method, by an explicit exploration mechanism and a chaotic local search strategy. The resulting augmented approach was theoretically tested on two sets of bound-constrained benchmark functions from the CEC suites and practically validated for automatically selecting the optimal dropout rate for the regularization of deep neural networks. Despite their successful applications in a wide spectrum of different fields, one important problem that deep learning algorithms face is overfitting. The traditional way of preventing overfitting is to apply regularization; the first option in this sense is the choice of an adequate value for the dropout parameter. In order to demonstrate its ability in finding an optimal dropout rate, the boosted version of the firefly algorithm has been validated for the deep learning subfield of convolutional neural networks, with respect to five standard benchmark datasets for image processing: MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, Semeion, USPS and CIFAR-10. The performance of the proposed approach in both types of experiments was compared with other recent state-of-the-art methods. To prove that there are significant improvements in results, statistical tests were conducted. Based on the experimental data, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithm clearly outperforms other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of nonlinear equations (SNLEs) is one of the eminent problems in science and engineering, and it is still open to research. A new hybrid intelligent algorithm is presented in this research to solve SNLEs. It is a composite of the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) and chaotic search technique (CST). The proposed methodology is named chaotic salp swarm algorithm (CSSA). CSSA is designed as an optimization process, whereby feasible and infeasible solutions are updated to move closer to the optimum value. The use of this hybrid intelligent methodology aims to improve performance, increase solution versatility, avoid the local optima trap, speed up convergence and optimize the search process. Firstly, SNLEs are transformed into an optimization problem. Secondly, CSSA is used to solve this optimization problem: SSA is used to update the feasible solutions, whereas the infeasible solutions are updated by CST. One of the most significant advantages of the suggested technique is that it does not ignore infeasible solutions that are updated, because these solutions are often extremely near to the optimal solution, resulting in increased search effectiveness and effective exploration and exploitation. The algorithm's mathematical model is presented in detail. Finally, the proposed approach is assessed with several benchmark problems and real-world applications. Simulation results show that the proposed CSSA is competitive and better in comparison to others, which illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. In addition, a statistical analysis by the Wilcoxon rankings test between CSSA and the other comparison methods shows that all p-values are less than 0.05, and CSSA achieves negative ranks' sum values (R−) much better than the positive ranks' sum values (R+) in all benchmark problems. In addition, the results have high precision and show good agreement in comparison with similar methods, and they further proved the ability of CSSA to solve real-world applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Path-planning for uninhabited combat air vehicles (UCAV) is a typically complicated global optimization problem. It seeks a superior flight path in a complex battlefield environment, taking into various constraints. Many swarm intelligence (SI) algorithms have recently gained remarkable attention due to their capability to address complex optimization problems. However, different SI algorithms present various performances for UCAV path-planning since each algorithm has its own strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, this study provides an overview of different SI algorithms for UCAV path-planning research. In the experiment, twelve algorithms that published in major journals and conference proceedings are surveyed and then applied to UCAV path-planning. Moreover, to demonstrate the performance of different algorithms in further, we design different scales of problem cases for those comparative algorithms. The experimental results show that UCAV can find the safe path to avoid the threats efficiently based on most SI algorithms. In particular, the Spider Monkey Optimization is more effective and robust than other algorithms in handling the UCAV path-planning problem. The analysis from different perspectives contributes to highlight trends and open issues in the field of UCAVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]