A Modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm with Firefly Algorithm Strategy for Continuous Optimization Problems

As a relatively new paradigm of evolutionary algorithms, artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm has shown attractive performance in solving optimization problems. However, for some complex optimization problems, its performance is still not satisfactory. To address this concerning issue, in this paper, we designed an improved ABC variant, called DLABC, based on the division of labor theory. In the DLABC, both of the employed bee phase and the onlooker bee phase are modified by introducing new solution search equations. For the modified employed bee phase, two new control parameters are introduced in the new solution search equation, which aims to control the frequency of perturbation and the magnitude of perturbation, respectively. For the modified onlooker bee phase, a novel depth-first search framework is used which tends to allocate more computing resources to elite solutions for accelerating convergence rate. By combing these two modified phases, we attempt to balance the exploration and exploitation capabilities of ABC. Numerical experiments are conducted on the CEC 2019 100-digit challenge benchmark suite, and the DLABC is compared with the basic ABC and a recently well-established ABC variant (DFSABC_elite). The total scores of these included algorithms have shown that our proposed DLABC algorithm performed best.

Artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) is a simple yet effective biologically-inspired optimization method for global numerical optimization problems. However, ABC often suffers from slow convergence due to its solution search equation performs well in exploration but badly in exploitation. Moreover, all food sources are assigned with almost equal computing resources so that good solutions are not being fully exploited. In order to address these issues, we propose a multi-population based search strategy ensemble ABC algorithm with a novel resource allocation mechanism (called MPABC_RA). Specifically, in employed bee phase, all food sources are divided into three subgroups according to their quality. Then each subgroup uses different search equations to find better solutions. By this way, better tradeoff between exploitation and exploration can be obtained. In addition, the superior solutions in onlooker bee phase are allocated with more resources to evolve. And onlooker bees fully exploit the area between the locations of the selected superior solutions and the current best solution by a novel search equation. We compare MPABC_RA with four state-of-the-art ABC variants on 22 benchmark functions, the experimental results show that MPABC_RA is significantly better than the compared algorithms on most test functions in terms of solution accuracy, convergence rate and robustness.

Swarm intelligence is briefly defined as the collective behavior of decentralized and self-organized swarms. Self-organization and labor division are the two key components of swarm intelligence. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the most recent swarm intelligence-based algorithms. The behavior of bees in ABC algorithm satisfies the self-organization features, but there is no specific labor division mechanism in ABC algorithm. In this work, we propose an improved ABC algorithm called labor division artificial bee colony (LDABC) algorithm by incorporating the labor division mechanism into ABC algorithm, which is achieved by individual specialization and role plasticity. We specify three different search methods for employed bees, onlooker bees and scout bees to realize individual specialization, these search methods are related to food source quality, enable bees to maximize exploitation of food source. Role plasticity is achieved by combining with cellular automata, where the roles of bees are not static but vary with their surrounding environment, enable bees not to limit to one search method. The different search modes and the flexibility of the search behaviors make our algorithm achieve a better balance between exploration and exploitation. The experimental results tested on 13 benchmark functions and CEC-2013 test functions demonstrate a competitive performance.

To develop sustainable groundwater management strategies, generally coupled simulation-optimization (SO) models are used. In this study, a new SO model is developed by coupling moving least squares (MLS)-based meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method and modified artificial bee colony (MABC) algorithm. The MLPG simulation model utilizes the advantages of meshless methods over the grid-based techniques such as finite difference (FDM) and finite element method (FEM). For optimization, the basic artificial bee colony algorithm is modified to balance the exploration and exploitation capacity of the model more effectively. The performance of the developed MLPG-MABC model is investigated by applying it to hypothetical and field problems with three different management scenarios. The model results are compared with other available SO model solutions for its accuracy. Further, sensitivity analyses of various model parameters are carried out to check the robustness of the SO model. The proposed model gave quite promising results, showing the applicability of the present approach.

An adaptive chaotic artificial bee colony algorithm for short-term hydrothermal generation scheduling

A labor division artificial bee colony algorithm based on behavioral development

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a popular swarm intelligence based algorithm. Although it has been proven to be competitive to other population-based algorithms, there still exist some problems it cannot solve very well. This paper presents an Enhanced Hybridized Artificial Bee Colony (EHABC) algorithm for optimization problems. The incentive mechanism of EHABC includes enhancing the convergence speed with the information of the global best solution in the onlooker bee phase and enhancing the information exchange between bees by introducing the mutation operator of Genetic Algorithm to ABC in the mutation bee phase. In addition, to enhance the accuracy performance of ABC, the opposition-based learning method is employed to produce the initial population. Experiments are conducted on six standard benchmark functions. The results demonstrate good performance of the enhanced hybridized ABC in solving continuous numerical optimization problems over ABC GABC, HABC and EABC.

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm invented by Karaboga has been proved to be an efficient technique compared with other biological-inspired algorithms for solving numerical optimization problems. Unfortunately, convergence speed of ABC is slow when working with certain optimization problems and some complex multimodal problems. Aiming at the shortcomings, a hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed in this paper. In the hybrid ABC, an improved search operator learned from Differential Evolution (DE) is applied to enhance search process, and a not-so-good solutions selection strategy inspired by free search algorithm (FS) is introduced to avoid local optimum. Especially, a reverse selection strategy is also employed to do improvement in onlooker bee phase. In addition, chaotic systems based on the tent map are executed in population initialization and scout bee's phase. The proposed algorithm is conducted on a set of 40 optimization test functions with different mathematical characteristics. The numerical results of the data analysis, statistical analysis, robustness analysis and the comparisons with other state-of-the-art-algorithms demonstrate that the proposed hybrid ABC algorithm provides excellent convergence and global search ability.

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is an important branch of evolutionary algorithms and has been shown to be competitive with other algorithms for solving optimisation problems. However, there are always some insufficiencies in ABC algorithm such as lower convergence speed and easily get trapped in the local optima. To increase depth search capabilities of onlooker bees and ensure scout bees do not discard the current optimal solution, we proposed a modified ABC algorithm (denoted as ORABC) based on the optimisation strategy and retained strategy of the best individual in this paper. Compared with ABC algorithm, ABC* (added retained strategy to ABC) and ORABC algorithm, experiments are conducted on a set of numerical benchmark functions. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that ORABC algorithm improves the convergence characteristics of ABC algorithm and provides very remarkable performance in solving complex numerical optimisation problems compared to original algorithm.

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm has been proven to be an effective swarm intelligence-based algorithm to solve various numerical optimization problems. To improve the exploration and exploitation capabilities of ABC algorithm a new phase, namely disruption phase is introduced in the basic ABC. In disruption phase, disrupted operator in which the solutions are attracted or disrupted from the best solution based on the their respective distance from the best solution, is applied to all the solutions except the best solution. Further, the proposed strategy has been evaluated on 15 different benchmark functions and compared with basic ABC and two of its variants, namely modified ABC (MABC) and best so for ABC (BSFABC).

A human planner's expertise is currently the most important consideration for determining optimal beam angles for external beam radiotherapy. The necessity of automatically selecting beam angles is especially important in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) since fewer modulated beams are utilized in conformal radiotherapy. For an automated beam angle selection (ABAS) approach, the ideal coplanar beam angles correspond to the lowest objective function (OF) value of the dose distributions produced from this collection of candidate beams' intensity-modulated maps. Because of the task's intricacy and the large search space concerned, the ABAS and optimization of intensity maps are addressed independently and repeatedly. The Modified Artificial Bee Colony (MABC) optimization, the integration of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), and a Firefly algorithm are employed to choose suitable beam angles, and the conjugate gradient (CG) technique is employed to fasten the optimized intensity maps for every selected beam. A 3D full scatter convolution (FSC) approach based on the pencil beam is employed for dose assessment. The effectiveness of MABC is examined using a more difficult instance representing a prostate tumor, and 2 simple cases The simulated MABC output is compared to the ABC optimization method. The results illustrate the reliability and efficiency of the suggested MABC-based ABAS can improve dosage distributions with clinically acceptable computation time.

A self adaptive hybrid enhanced artificial bee colony algorithm for continuous optimization problems

In the field of data analysis, clustering is a powerful technique which groups the data into different subsets using a distance function. Data belonging to the same subset are similar in nature and offer heterogeneity to the data that reside in other subsets. Clustering has proved its potentiality in various fields such as bioinformatics, pattern recognition, image processing and many more. In this paper, a two-step artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is proposed for efficient data clustering. In two-step ABC algorithm, the initial positions of food sources are identified using the K-means algorithm instead of random initialization. Along this, to discover the promising search areas, an improved solution search equation based on social behavior of PSO is applied in the onlooker bee phase of ABC algorithm and abandoned food source location is found by using Hooke and Jeeves-based direct search method. Five benchmark and two artificial datasets are applied to validate the proposed modifications in the ABC algorithm, and results of this study are compared with other well-known clustering algorithms. Both the experimental and statistical analyses show that improvements in ABC algorithm have an advantage over the conventional ABC algorithm for solving clustering problems.

INTRODUCTION: The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a nature-inspired technique used for solving different optimization problems. This paper presents a multi-hive ABC algorithm for solving constrained benchmark functions of CEC2006. The CEC2006 data set contains the global benchmark functions with different design variables, number and type of constraints. OBJECTIVES: The objective of the proposed work is to design and apply the GPGPU based multi-hive ABC algorithm to solve constrained optimization problems. METHODS: The proposed approach is a multi-population coarse-grained system implemented using General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU). The performance of the proposed approach is compared with the serial ABC algorithm for eleven benchmark functions and results in the literature. The multi-hive ABC algorithm has multiple hives, each running separate ABC algorithm on different cores of GPGPU. RESULTS: The proposed approach provides global best solutions in significantly reduced time for all benchmark functions. The speed-up obtained is approximately 7X to 9X. The GPGPU device utilization is approximately 57% to 91%. CONCLUSION: The GPGPU based multi-hive ABC algorithm is a found good with respect to best results, speed up factor and GPU utilization to solve constrained optimization problems.

The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is a swarm intelligence approach which has initially been proposed to solve optimization of mathematical test functions with a unique neighbourhood search mechanism. However, this neighbourhood search mechanism could not be directly applied to combinatorial discrete optimization problems. The employed and onlooker bees need to be equipped with problem-specific perturbative heuristics in order to tackle combinatorial discrete optimization problems. However, there is a large variety of available problem-specific heuristics. In this paper, a hyper-heuristic method, namely a Modified Choice Function (MCF), is applied such that it can regulate the selection of the neighbourhood search heuristics adopted by the employed and onlooker bees automatically. The proposed MCF-based ABC model is implemented using the Hyper-heuristic Flexible Framework (HyFlex). To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, ten Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) instances available in HyFlex have been evaluated. The empirical results show that the proposed model is able to statistically outperform four out of five ABC variants throughout the optimization process.