SamACO: variable sampling ant colony optimization algorithm for continuous optimization

An ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm offers algorithmic techniques for optimization by simulating the foraging behavior of a group of ants to perform incremental solution constructions and to realize a pheromone laying-and-following mechanism. Although ACO is first designed for solving discrete (combinatorial) optimization problems, the ACO procedure is also applicable to continuous optimization. This paper presents a new way of extending ACO to solving continuous optimization problems by focusing on continuous variable sampling as a key to transforming ACO from discrete optimization to continuous optimization. The proposed SamACO algorithm consists of three major steps, i.e., the generation of candidate variable values for selection, the ants’ solution construction, and the pheromone update process. The distinct characteristics of SamACO are the cooperation of a novel sampling method for discretizing the continuous search space and an efficient incremental solution construction method based on the sampled values. The performance of SamACO is tested using continuous numerical functions with unimodal and multimodal features. Compared with some state-of-the-art algorithms, including traditional ant-based algorithms and representative computational intelligence algorithms for continuous optimization, the performance of SamACO is seen competitive and promising

Parameter estimation with bio-inspired meta-heuristic optimization: modeling the dynamics of endocytosis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We address the task of parameter estimation in models of the dynamics of biological systems based on ordinary differential equations (ODEs) from measured data, where the models are typically non-linear and have many parameters, the measurements are imperfect due to noise, and the studied system can often be only partially observed. A representative task is to estimate the parameters in a model of the dynamics of endocytosis, i.e., endosome maturation, reflected in a cut-out switch transition between the Rab5 and Rab7 domain protein concentrations, from experimental measurements of these concentrations. The general parameter estimation task and the specific instance considered here are challenging optimization problems, calling for the use of advanced meta-heuristic optimization methods, such as evolutionary or swarm-based methods.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We apply three global-search meta-heuristic algorithms for numerical optimization, i.e., differential ant-stigmergy algorithm (DASA), particle-swarm optimization (PSO), and differential evolution (DE), as well as a local-search derivative-based algorithm 717 (A717) to the task of estimating parameters in ODEs. We evaluate their performance on the considered representative task along a number of metrics, including the quality of reconstructing the system output and the complete dynamics, as well as the speed of convergence, both on real-experimental data and on artificial pseudo-experimental data with varying amounts of noise. We compare the four optimization methods under a range of observation scenarios, where data of different completeness and accuracy of interpretation are given as input.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Overall, the global meta-heuristic methods (DASA, PSO, and DE) clearly and significantly outperform the local derivative-based method (A717). Among the three meta-heuristics, differential evolution (DE) performs best in terms of the objective function, i.e., reconstructing the output, and in terms of convergence. These results hold for both real and artificial data, for all observability scenarios considered, and for all amounts of noise added to the artificial data. In sum, the meta-heuristic methods considered are suitable for estimating the parameters in the ODE model of the dynamics of endocytosis under a range of conditions: With the model and conditions being representative of parameter estimation tasks in ODE models of biochemical systems, our results clearly highlight the promise of bio-inspired meta-heuristic methods for parameter estimation in dynamic system models within system biology.</p

Enabling swarm aggregation of position data via adaptive stigmergy: a case study in urban traffic flows

Urban road congestion estimation is a challenge in traffic management. City traffic state can vary temporally and spatially between road links, depending on crossroads and lanes. In addition, congestion estimation requires some sort of tuning to “what is around” to trigger appropriate reactions. An adaptive aggregation mechanism of position data is therefore crucial for traffic control. We present a biologically-inspired technique to aggregate position samples coming from on-vehicle devices. In essence, each vehicle position sample is spatially and temporally augmented with digital pheromone information, locally deposited and evaporated. As a consequence, an aggregated pheromone concentration appears and stays spontaneously while many stationary vehicles and high density roads occur. Pheromone concentration is then sharpened to achieve a better distinction of critical phenomena to be triggered as detected traffic events. The overall mechanism can be actually enabled if structural parameters are correctly tuned for the given application context. Determining such correct parameters is not a simple task since different urban areas have different traffic flux and density. Thus, an appropriate tuning to adapt parameters to the specific urban area is desirable to make the estimation effective. In this paper, we show how this objective can be achieved by using differential evolution

Optimal design of adaptive power scheduling using modified ant colony optimization algorithm

For generating and distributing an economic load scheduling approach, artificial neural network (ANN) has been introduced, because power generation and power consumption are economically non-identical. An efficient load scheduling method is suggested in this paper. Normally the power generation system fails due to its instability at peak load time. Traditionally, load shedding process is used in which low priority loads are disconnected from sources. The proposed method handles this problem by scheduling the load based on the power requirements. In many countries the power systems are facing limitations of energy. An efficient optimization algorithm is used to periodically schedule the load demand and the generation. Ant colony optimization (ACO) based ANN is used for this optimal load scheduling process. The present work analyse the technical economical and time-dependent limitations. Also the works meets the demanded load with minimum cost of energy. Inorder to train ANN back propagation (BP) technics is used. A hybrid training process is described in this work. Global optimization algorithms are used to provide back propagation with good initial connection weights