Prospective hydrogen-based microgrid systems for optimal leverage via metaheuristic approaches

Fuzzy systems (FSs) have been extensively applied to automatic control, pattern recognition, and decision analysis. However, a common bottleneck is encountered in the derivation of fuzzy rules, which is often difficult, time consuming, and relies on expert knowledge. To automate the design of FSs, many metaheuristic learning algorithms have been proposed. One major optimization category uses Swarm Intelligence (SI) model (Kennedy et al., 2001). The SI technique studies collective behavior in decentralized systems. Its development was based on mimicking the social behavior of animals or insects in an effort to find the optima in the problem space. SI models are initialized with a population of random solutions. One well-known SI model is particle swarm optimization (PSO) (Kennedy & Eberhart, 1995). Many modified PSO models have been proposed and successfully applied to different optimization problems (Clerc & Kennedy, 2002; Bergh & Engelbrecht, 2004; Ratnaweera et al., 2004; Juang, 2004; Kennedy & Mendes, 2006; Parrott & Li, 2006; Chen & Li, 2007). FS design using PSO has also been proposed in several studies (Juang, 2004; Chatterjee et al., 2005; Juang et al., 2007; Araujo & Coelho, 2008; Sharma et al., 2009). Another well-known SI is ant colony optimization (ACO) (Dorigo & Stutzle, 2004). The ACO technique is inspired by real ant colony observations. It is a multi-agent approach that was originally proposed to solve difficult discrete combinatorial optimization problems, such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP) (Dorigo et al., 1996; Dorigo & Gambardella, 1997). In the original ACO meta-heuristic, artificial ant colonies cooperate to find good solutions for difficult discrete optimization problems. Different ACO models have been applied to FS design problems (Cassillas et al., 2000; Cassillas et al., 2005; Mucientes & Casillas; 2007; Juang & Lo, 2007; Juang et al., 2008; Juang & Lu; 2009). In (Cassillas et al.,2000; Mucientes & Casillas; 2007; Juang et al., 2008; Juang & Lu; 2009), the FS input space was partitioned in grid type with antecedent part parameters of an FS manually assigned in advance. In (Juang & Lo, 2007), the FS input space was flexibly partitioned using a fuzzy clustering-like algorithm in order to reduce the total number of rules. For all of these studies, the consequent part parameters were optimized in discrete space using ACO. Since only the consequent part parameters are optimized, and the optimization space is restricted to be discrete, the designed FSs are unsuitable for problems where high accuracy is a major concern. Source: Fuzzy Systems, Book edited by: Ahmad Taher Azar, ISBN 978-953-7619-92-3, pp. 216, February 2010, INTECH, Croatia, downloaded from SCIYO.COM

Both the American Petroleum Institute (API) 17N: 2009 and Det Norske Veritas (DNV) RP-A203 (2011) recommend that the technologies inserted into subsea installations should be assessed during design and manufacturing using a technology readiness level (TRL) scale. This should be used as a measure of maturity of all the individual technologies, for qualification and readiness assurance. This paper proposes the creation of a system-based approach for managing the development of subsea systems and making effective decisions to ensure the efficient progress of the project. It recommends complementing TRL with an integration readiness level (IRL) scale, to address IRL between the inserted technologies, along with a system readiness level (SRL) scale to assess the overall project status. It also presents a method for combining the current TRL scale and the proposed new IRL scale to determine an estimate of SRL at all stages of a subsea system development. This provides a composite metric for determining the system readiness level for project delivery. The application of the new proposed scales is demonstrated using a case example.

In this chapter, one gives an introduction to different kinds of particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms. One also introduces artificial neural networks (ANNs), support vector machines (SVMs) and evolutionary computing to show how PSO may be used to determine optimal parameters using an ANN or SVM regime, for classification of DNA strings. In addition, PSO is used in the design of an SVM-based clustering algorithm. Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms are also introduced in the chapter. Using ACO algorithms has been of great success to solve many discrete optimization and non-deterministic polynomial (NP)-hard problems, for instance the travelling salesman problem. The behaviour of ants is also used, for instance, to design an algorithm for data clustering. We want to develop later a similar application based on this clustering algorithm and compare it with the SVM one using PSO.

Each university has different regulations in making lecture schedule according to the conditions of respective institution. In this study, regulation on lecture scheduling used the maximum limit of credits of lecturer in a day, in which if exceeds the maximum limit, then the schedule of course will be moved on another day. This study attempts to optimize the schedule preparation in each semester by considering the maximum limit of credits of a lecturer in a day. Lecture scheduling is a combination of space, time, and resources. It is categorized into combinatorial optimization group. There are two methods for solving the combinatorial optimization problems, i.e. exact and approximation method. The approximation method consists of two types, heuristics and metaheuristics. The algorithm metaheuristics categories include genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO), bee colony optimization (BCO), simulated annealing, and so on. This paper employed metaheuristics approach. Research on the preparation of lecture scheduling using ACO algorithm has been conducted and proven to be able to prepare the lecture scheduling. The ACO algorithm has numbers of parameters that in solving issues, one must manually set a number of parameters by using the Design of Experiments (DoE) tool, which takes time to solve the optimization problem. Hence, to solve the issue, an automated parameter optimization is required. PSO algorithm has fewer parameters compared to the ACO. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is a hybrid between PSO and ACO in preparing lecture scheduling.

The present article investigates the effectiveness of evolutionary computation algorithms in a specific optimisation task, namely morphological segmentation of words into subword segments, focusing on the definition of stems and endings. More precisely, particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is compared to an earlier study on the same task using ant colony optimisation (ACO), using a number of different optimisation criteria, for each of which independent experiments are run. In the present article, the system architecture has been revised over earlier implementations, to allow substantially faster simulation times (by several orders of magnitude), which in turn allows the realisation of more iterations. The effect of local search to the PSO final segmentation quality is investigated in detail, with different local search processes being compared in terms of their effectiveness. In addition, issues involving the convergence of PSO are examined, encompassing variants which adopt global versus local training schemes. Experimental results show that, for different datasets, as a rule both PSO and ACO achieve higher segmentation accuracies than manual tuning. A comparison between ACO and PSO is made, over the different criteria used. When focusing on the highest performing criteria, ACO and PSO are comparable, while the system revisions allow the process to be completed much faster. In terms of the highest segmentation accuracy obtained for a specific system configuration, PSO is more effective, by achieving the highest segmentation accuracy amongst all optimisation methods tested.

The article assesses the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) according to the developed TRL checklist. The TRL approach has been applied to analyzing the technology readiness level of a Russian start-up company producing systems of multisensory and multifunction devices for Smart House. The authors approbated the modified TRL methodology, which made it possible to evaluate the readiness of technologies’ integration among themselves and to get a generalized assessment of the readiness of the technologies’ system – Integration Readiness Levels (IRL). It has been proved that the System Readiness Level (SRL) of technology corresponds to the design concept stage. Taking into account indicators and means of quality assurance at the stages of design and initiation of such production is highly relevant.

Based on the mobile robot path planning problem, on the basis of the improved grid method, this paper proposes an improved ant colony algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm can be incorporated into the ant colony algorithm. Firstly, using the particle swarm optimization algorithm to search for global path roughly. At the same time of search for dynamic pheromone intelligent distribution, to get ant colony algorithm's initial pheromone distribution and according to the pheromone content to eliminate some poor path. Secondly, using ant colony algorithm for the optimal path, it was gotten by particle swarm optimization for the secondary search. Finally, get the optimal solution of path search. The simulation results show that, the fusion algorithm does better than the ant colony algorithm in terms of path optimization.

Efficient multiprocessor scheduling is essentially the problem of allocating a set of computational jobs to a set of processors to minimize the overall execution time. The main issue is how jobs are partitioned in which total finishing time and waiting time is minimized. Minimization of these two criteria simultaneously, is a multi objective optimization problem. There are many variations of this problem, most of which are NP-hard problem, so we must rely on heuristics to solve the problem instances. Many heuristic-based approaches have been applied to finding schedules that minimize the execution time of computing tasks on parallel processors. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is currently employed in several optimization and search problems due to its ease and ability to find solutions successfully. A variant of PSO, called as improved particle swarm optimization (ImPSO) has been developed in this paper and is hybridized with the ant colony optimization (ACO) to achieve better solutions. The proposed hybrid algorithm effectively exploits the capabilities of distributed and parallel computing of swarm intelligence approaches. In addition hybrid algorithm using improved particle swarm optimization (ImPSO) with artificial immune system (AIS) is also implemented for the same set of problems to compare with the proposed hybrid algorithm (ImPSO with ACO). It was observed that the proposed hybrid approach (Improved PSO with ACO) gives better results in experiments and reduces finishing and waiting time simultaneously. Key words: Particle swarm optimization (PSO), improved particle swarm optimization (ImPSO), ant colony optimization (ACO), job scheduling, finishing time, waiting time.

Systems engineers need quantifiable metrics for measuring the readiness of a system. The recently developed System Readiness Level ( SRL ) is such a metric. SRL is a function of Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and Integration Readiness Level (IRL). The mathematical operations used to define this function have some inherent properties. Four desired mathematical properties of SRL models are developed from these inherent properties and other properties suggested from a review of the literature. Matrix algebra and tropical algebra are discussed in the literature as possible mathematical operations. These mathematical operations are reviewed to determine if they meet the desired properties. Tropical Algebra (TA) is found to inherently meet these desired properties. Future research will be conducted to determine if an SRL model using TA is a viable option. ©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 16:

To determine the optimal trajectory of mobile robots in a complex environment and to enhance the effectiveness of search efficiency and path optimization, an improved ant colony (ACO) algorithm is proposed. A fusion algorithm of improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ACO algorithm is proposed to solve for optimal paths. Firstly, we improve the PSO and adaptively adjust the inertia weight to facilitate the particle search. Besides, we disturb the particles with the chaotic variables to increase the convergence speed. Secondly, the pheromone distribution on the path is adjusted based on the optimal solution of PSO to solve the initial pheromone insufficiency issue in the ACO algorithm. Then, to optimize the update strategy, we adaptively adjust the pheromone intensity values. We also provide a wide range of control schemes for updating the parameters for balancing the search capability and convergence. The results in the simulation environment show that our algorithm is more effective than other improved algorithms. The improved fusion algorithm converges faster and finds shorter optimal path. The method can improve the comprehensive performance and achieve the rapid path planning for mobile robots.

The cutting and sewing process is a traditional flow shop scheduling problem in the real world. This two-stage flexible flow shop is often commonly associated with manufacturing in the fashion and textiles industry. Many investigations have demonstrated that the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is effective and efficient for solving scheduling problems. This work applies a novel effective ant colony optimization (EACO) algorithm to solve two-stage flexible flow shop scheduling problems and thereby minimize earliness, tardiness, and makespan. Computational results reveal that for both small and large problems, EACO is more effective and robust than both the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and the ACO algorithm. Importantly, this work demonstrates that EACO can solve complex scheduling problems in an acceptable period of time.

<p><strong>Context and relevance.</strong>The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the key NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems with wide applications in logistics, transportation planning, and other fields. Exact methods for solving TSP become inefficient as the problem dimension increases, making the use of metaheuristic methods such as simulated annealing (SA), ant colony optimization (ACO), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) relevant. <strong>Objective. </strong>To conduct a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of SA, ACO and PSO for solving the traveling salesman problem with 100 points, to evaluate their convergence and to identify the optimal parameters. <strong>Hypothesis. </strong>The ant algorithm, due to the pheromone trail mechanism, will provide higher accuracy of solutions compared to SA and PSO, but will require more computational resources. <strong>Methods and materials. </strong>The study conducted computational experiments with varying parameters of each algorithm. For SA, the initial temperature and cooling coefficient were analyzed, for ACO, the influence of pheromones and distances, for PSO, the cognitive and social coefficients. <strong>Results. </strong>ACO showed the best results, finding a route with a length of 9.23, demonstrating high efficiency for medium-sized problems. PSO took an intermediate position with a route length of 32.64, making it suitable for moderately complex problems. SA was the least effective, with a route length of 45.2, which limits its use for complex routing networks. <strong>Conclusions. </strong>The ant algorithm demonstrated the greatest efficiency due to the balance between exploring the solution space and exploiting the found routes, which is especially important for maritime Arctic logistics, where sustainable route optimization is required under high uncertainty. PSO showed good convergence, but it is inferior to ACO in terms of accuracy. SA, despite its simplicity, is less effective for high-dimensional problems. The obtained results are of particular practical value for route optimization in the Arctic region, where traditional methods often prove to be ineffective.</p>

Genetic Algorithms (GA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Bee Colonies (ABC) are some vital nature inspired computing (NIC) techniques. These approaches have been used in early prophecy of various diseases. This article analyzes the efficacy of various NIC techniques in diagnosing diverse critical human disorders. It is observed that GA, ACO, PSO and ABC have been successfully used in early diagnosis of different diseases. As compared to ACO, PSO and ABC algorithms, GA has been extensively used in diagnosis of ecology, cardiology and endocrinologist. In addition, from the last six years of research, it has been observed that the accuracy accomplished using GA, ACO, PSO and ABC in the early diagnosis of cancer, diabetes and cardio problems lies between 73.5%-99.7%, 70%-99.2%, 80%-98% and 76.4% to 99.98% respectively. Furthermore, ACO, PSO and ABC are found to be best suited in diagnosing lung, prostate and breast cancer respectively. Moreover, the hybrid use of NIC techniques produces better results as compared to their individual use.

Vehicle routing problems (VRP) arise in many real-life applications within transportation and logistics. This paper considers vehicle routing models in grain logistics (GLVRP) and its hybrid intelligent algorithm. The objective of GLVRP is to use a fleet of vehicles with specific capacity to serve a number of customers with fixed demand and time window constraints. A hybrid intelligent algorithm base on particle swarm and ant colony optimization (PSACO-GLVRP) is proposed to solve this problem. Both particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony optimization (ACO) are co-operative, population-based global search swarm intelligence metaheuristics. PSO is inspired by social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling, while ACO imitates foraging behavior of real life ants. In the experiments, a number of numerical examples are carried out for testing and verification. The Computational results confirm the efficiency of the proposed methodology.

This paper provide a solution for the medium size power plant in economic load dispatch problem using an Ant Colony Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization with renewable energy. Renewable energy sources are a reasonable choice to tackle the issue of traditional method of electricity produced. Wind power has proven to be promising alternative sources to overcoming the world’s energy crises. Wind intermittent nature and strong penetration into power system is a major challenge to their reliability and securely installations. In this work, ELD problem is formulated using wind cost function. The Renewable power variability and uncertainty entail additional costs, called penalty costs. The algorithms Ant Colony and Particle Swarm Optimization are used to allocate the thermal and wind generating units at minimal operating cost to meet load demand. The proposed calculation has been approved on 26 bus system. The Results obtained with this methodology are compared with each others.