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Nature-inspired metaheuristics comprise a compelling family of optimization techniques. These algorithms are designed with the idea of emulating some kind natural phenomena (such as the theory of evolution, the collective behavior of groups of animals, the laws of physics or the behavior and lifestyle of human beings) and applying them to solve complex problems. Nature-inspired methods have taken the area of mathematical optimization by storm. Only in the last few years, literature related to the development of this kind of techniques and their applications has experienced an unprecedented increase, with hundreds of new papers being published every single year. In this paper, we analyze some of the most popular nature-inspired optimization methods currently reported on the literature, while also discussing their applications for solving real-world problems and their impact on the current literature. Furthermore, we open discussion on several research gaps and areas of opportunity that are yet to be explored within this promising area of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel and effective technique for extracting multiple ellipses from an image. The approach employs an evolutionary algorithm to mimic the way animals behave collectively assuming the overall detection process as a multi-modal optimization problem. In the algorithm, searcher agents emulate a group of animals that interact with each other using simple biological rules which are modeled as evolutionary operators. In turn, such operators are applied to each agent considering that the complete group has a memory to store optimal solutions (ellipses) seen so far by applying a competition principle. The detector uses a combination of five edge points as parameters to determine ellipse candidates (possible solutions), while a matching function determines if such ellipse candidates are actually present in the image. Guided by the values of such matching functions, the set of encoded candidate ellipses are evolved through the evolutionary algorithm so that the best candidates can be fitted into the actual ellipses within the image. Just after the optimization process ends, an analysis over the embedded memory is executed in order to find the best obtained solution (the best ellipse) and significant local minima (remaining ellipses). Experimental results over several complex synthetic and natural images have validated the efficiency of the proposed technique regarding accuracy, speed, and robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hough transform (HT) has been the most common method for circle detection that delivers robustness but adversely demands considerable computational efforts and large memory requirements. As an alternative to HT-based techniques, the problem of shape recognition has also been handled through optimization methods. In particular, extracting multiple circle primitives falls into the category of multi-modal optimization as each circle represents an optimum which must be detected within the feasible solution space. However, since all optimization-based circle detectors focus on finding only a single optimal solution, they need to be applied several times in order to extract all the primitives which results on time-consuming algorithms. This paper presents an algorithm for automatic detection of multiple circular shapes that considers the overall process as a multi-modal optimization problem. In the detection, the approach employs an evolutionary algorithm based on the way in which the animals behave collectively. In such an algorithm, searcher agents emulate a group of animals which interact to each other using simple biological rules. These rules are modeled as evolutionary operators. Such operators are applied to each agent considering that the complete group maintains a memory which stores the optimal solutions seen so-far by applying a competition principle. The detector uses a combination of three non-collinear edge points as parameters to determine circle candidates (possible solutions). A matching function determines if such circle candidates are actually present in the image. Guided by the values of such matching functions, the set of encoded candidate circles are evolved through the evolutionary algorithm so that the best candidate (global optimum) can be fitted into an actual circle within the edge-only image. Subsequently, an analysis of the incorporated memory is executed in order to identify potential local optima which represent other circles. Experimental results over several complex synthetic and natural images have validated the efficiency of the proposed technique regarding accuracy, speed and robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in multimodal function optimization is expanding rapidly as 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. 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, allowing them to increase their harvesting efficiency to follow better migration routes, to improve their aerodynamic, and to avoid predation. In the proposed algorithm, searcher agents are a group of animals which interact with each other based on the biologic laws of collective motion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of finding global and local optima of benchmark multimodal optimization problems with a higher efficiency in comparison with other methods reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In engineering problems due to physical and cost constraints, the best results, obtained by a global optimization algorithm, cannot be realized always. Under such conditions, if multiple solutions (local and global) are known, the implementation can be quickly switched to another solution without much interrupting the design process. This paper presents a new swarm 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, allowing them to increase their harvesting efficiency to follow better migration routes, to improve their aerodynamic, and to avoid predation. In the proposed algorithm, searcher agents emulate a group of animals which interact with each other based on simple biological laws that are modeled as evolutionary operators. Numerical experiments are conducted to compare the proposed method with the state-of-the-art methods on benchmark functions. The proposed algorithm has been also applied to the engineering problem of multi-circle detection, achieving satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary Computation Methods (ECMs) are proposed as stochastic search methods to solve complex optimization problems where classical optimization methods are not suitable. Most of the proposed ECMs aim to find the global optimum for a given function. However, from a practical point of view, in engineering, finding the global optimum may not always be useful, since it may represent solutions that are not physically, mechanically or even structurally realizable. Commonly, the evolutionary operators of ECMs are not designed to efficiently register multiple optima by executing them a single run. Under such circumstances, there is a need to incorporate certain mechanisms to allow ECMs to maintain and register multiple optima at each generation executed in a single run. On the other hand, the concept of dominance found in animal behavior indicates the level of social interaction among two animals in terms of aggressiveness. Such aggressiveness keeps two or more individuals as distant as possible from one another, where the most dominant individual prevails as the other withdraws. In this paper, the concept of dominance is computationally abstracted in terms of a data structure called "competitive memory" to incorporate multimodal capabilities into the evolutionary operators of the recently proposed Cluster-Chaotic-Optimization (CCO). Under CCO, the competitive memory is implemented as a memory mechanism to efficiently register and maintain all possible optimal values within a single execution of the algorithm. The performance of the proposed method is numerically compared against several multimodal schemes over a set of benchmark functions. The experimental study suggests that the proposed approach outperforms its competitors in terms of robustness, quality, and precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]