Development of an Entropy-Based Swarm Algorithm for Continuous Dynamic Constrained Optimization

Dynamic constrained optimization problems form a class of problems WHERE the objective function or the constraints can change over time. In static optimization, finding a global optimum is considered as the main goal. In dynamic optimization, the goal is not only to find an optimal solution, but also track its trajectory as closely as possible over time. Changes in the environment must be taken into account during the optimization process in such way that these problems are to be solved online. Many real-world problems can be formulated within this framework. This thesis proposes an entropy-based bare bones particle swarm for solving dynamic constrained optimization problems. The Shannons entropy is established as a phenotypic diversity index and the proposed algorithm uses the Shannons index of diversity to aggregate the global-best and local-best bare bones particle swarm variants. The proposed approach applies the idea of mixture of search directions by using the index of diversity as a factor to balance the influence of the global-best and local-best search directions. High diversity promotes the search guided by the global-best solution, with a normal distribution for exploitation. Low diversity promotes the search guided by the local-best solution, with a heavy-tailed distribution for exploration. A constraint-handling strategy is also proposed, which uses a ranking method with selection based on the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution to obtain the best solution within a specific population of candidate solutions. Mechanisms to detect changes in the environment and to update particles' memories are also implemented into the proposed algorithm. All these strategies do not act independently. They operate related to each other to tackle problems such as: diversity loss due to convergence and outdated memories due to changes in the environment. The combined effect of these strategies provides an algorithm with ability to maintain a proper balance between exploration and exploitation at any stage of the search process without losing the tracking ability to search an optimal solution which is changing over time. An empirical study was carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. Experimental results show the suitability of the algorithm in terms of effectiveness to find good solutions for the benchmark problems investigated. Finally, an application is developed, WHERE the proposed algorithm is applied to solve the dynamic economic dispatch problem in power systems

A review of population-based metaheuristics for large-scale black-box global optimization: Part A

Scalability of optimization algorithms is a major challenge in coping with the ever growing size of optimization problems in a wide range of application areas from high-dimensional machine learning to complex large-scale engineering problems. The field of large-scale global optimization is concerned with improving the scalability of global optimization algorithms, particularly population-based metaheuristics. Such metaheuristics have been successfully applied to continuous, discrete, or combinatorial problems ranging from several thousand dimensions to billions of decision variables. In this two-part survey, we review recent studies in the field of large-scale black-box global optimization to help researchers and practitioners gain a bird’s-eye view of the field, learn about its major trends, and the state-of-the-art algorithms. Part of the series covers two major algorithmic approaches to large-scale global optimization: problem decomposition and memetic algorithms. Part of the series covers a range of other algorithmic approaches to large-scale global optimization, describes a wide range of problem areas, and finally touches upon the pitfalls and challenges of current research and identifies several potential areas for future research

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Motion Tracking for Medical Applications using Hierarchical Filter Models

A medical intervention often requires relating treatment to the situation, which it was planned on. In order to circumvent undesirable effects of motion during the intervention, positional differences must be detected in real-time. To this end, in this thesis a hierarchical Particle Filter based tracking algorithm is developed in three stages. Initially, a model description of the individual nodes in the aspired hierarchical tree is presented. Using different approaches, properties of such a node are derived and approximated, leading to a parametrization scheme. Secondly, transformations and appearance of the data are described by a fixed hierarchical tree. A sparse description for typical landmarks in medical image data is presented. A static tree model with two levels is developed and investigated. Finally, the notion of 'association' between landmarks and nodes is introduced in order to allow for dynamic adaptation to the underlying structure of the data. Processes for tree maintenance using clustering and sequential reinforcement are implemented. The function of the full algorithm is demonstrated on data of abdominal breathing motion

Task Allocation in Foraging Robot Swarms:The Role of Information Sharing

Autonomous task allocation is a desirable feature of robot swarms that collect and deliver items in scenarios where congestion, caused by accumulated items or robots, can temporarily interfere with swarm behaviour. In such settings, self-regulation of workforce can prevent unnecessary energy consumption. We explore two types of self-regulation: non-social, where robots become idle upon experiencing congestion, and social, where robots broadcast information about congestion to their team mates in order to socially inhibit foraging. We show that while both types of self-regulation can lead to improved energy efficiency and increase the amount of resource collected, the speed with which information about congestion flows through a swarm affects the scalability of these algorithms