8,423 research outputs found
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Discrete flower pollination algorithm for resource constrained project scheduling problem
YesIn this paper, a new population-based and nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm, Discrete Flower Pollination Algorithm (DFPA), is presented to solve the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP). The DFPA is a modification of existing Flower Pollination Algorithm adapted for solving combinatorial optimization problems by changing some of the algorithm's core concepts, such as flower, global pollination, Lévy flight, local pollination. The proposed DFPA is then tested on sets of benchmark instances and its performance is compared against other existing metaheuristic algorithms. The numerical results have shown that the proposed algorithm is efficient and outperforms several other popular metaheuristic algorithms, both in terms of quality of the results and execution time. Being discrete, the proposed algorithm can be used to solve any other combinatorial optimization problems.Innovate UKAwarded 'Best paper of the Month
PARAMETER-LESS AND METAPHOR-LESS METAHEURISTIC ALGORITHM SUGGESTION FOR SOLVING COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS
Many optimization problems are complex, challenging and take a significant amount of computational effort to solve. These problems have gained the attention of researchers and they have developed lots of metaheuristic algorithms to use for solving these problems. Most of the developed metaheuristic algorithms are based on some metaphors. For this reason, these algorithms have algorithm-specific parameters to reflect the nature of the inspired metaphor. This violates the algorithm's simplicity and brings extra workload to execute the algorithm. However, the optimization problems can also be solved with simple, useful, metaphor-less and algorithm-specific parameter-less metaheuristic algorithms. So, it is the essential motivation behind this study. We present a novel metaheuristic algorithm called Discrete Rao Algorithm (DRA) by updating some components of the generic Rao algorithm to solve the combinatorial optimization problems. To evaluate the performance of the DRA, we perform experiments on Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) which is the well-known combinatorial optimization problem. The experiments are performed on different sized benchmark problems in the literature. The computational results show that the developed algorithm has obtained high quality solutions in a reasonable computation time and it is competitive with other algorithms in the literature for solving the TSP
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Combinatorial optimization and metaheuristics
Today, combinatorial optimization is one of the youngest and most active areas of discrete mathematics. It is a branch of optimization in applied mathematics and computer science, related to operational research, algorithm theory and computational complexity theory. It sits at the intersection of several fields, including artificial intelligence, mathematics and software engineering. Its increasing interest arises for the fact that a large number of scientific and industrial problems can be formulated as abstract combinatorial optimization problems, through graphs and/or (integer) linear programs. Some of these problems have polynomial-time (“efficient”) algorithms, while most of them are NP-hard, i.e. it is not proved that they can be solved in polynomial-time. Mainly, it means that it is not possible to guarantee that an exact solution to the problem can be found and one has to settle for an approximate solution with known performance guarantees. Indeed, the goal of approximate methods is to find “quickly” (reasonable run-times), with “high” probability, provable “good” solutions (low error from the real optimal solution). In the last 20 years, a new kind of algorithm commonly called metaheuristics have emerged in this class, which basically try to combine heuristics in high level frameworks aimed at efficiently and effectively exploring the search space. This report briefly outlines the components, concepts, advantages and disadvantages of different metaheuristic approaches from a conceptual point of view, in order to analyze their similarities and differences. The two very significant forces of intensification and diversification, that mainly determine the behavior of a metaheuristic, will be pointed out. The report concludes by exploring the importance of hybridization and integration methods
AED: An Anytime Evolutionary DCOP Algorithm
Evolutionary optimization is a generic population-based metaheuristic that
can be adapted to solve a wide variety of optimization problems and has proven
very effective for combinatorial optimization problems. However, the potential
of this metaheuristic has not been utilized in Distributed Constraint
Optimization Problems (DCOPs), a well-known class of combinatorial optimization
problems prevalent in Multi-Agent Systems. In this paper, we present a novel
population-based algorithm, Anytime Evolutionary DCOP (AED), that uses
evolutionary optimization to solve DCOPs. In AED, the agents cooperatively
construct an initial set of random solutions and gradually improve them through
a new mechanism that considers an optimistic approximation of local benefits.
Moreover, we present a new anytime update mechanism for AED that identifies the
best among a distributed set of candidate solutions and notifies all the agents
when a new best is found. In our theoretical analysis, we prove that AED is
anytime. Finally, we present empirical results indicating AED outperforms the
state-of-the-art DCOP algorithms in terms of solution quality.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Appeared in the proceedings of the 19th
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS
2020
Firefly Algorithm: Recent Advances and Applications
Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, especially those based on swarm
intelligence, have attracted much attention in the last ten years. Firefly
algorithm appeared in about five years ago, its literature has expanded
dramatically with diverse applications. In this paper, we will briefly review
the fundamentals of firefly algorithm together with a selection of recent
publications. Then, we discuss the optimality associated with balancing
exploration and exploitation, which is essential for all metaheuristic
algorithms. By comparing with intermittent search strategy, we conclude that
metaheuristics such as firefly algorithm are better than the optimal
intermittent search strategy. We also analyse algorithms and their implications
for higher-dimensional optimization problems.Comment: 15 page
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