15 research outputs found

    Improved roach-based algorithms for global optimization problems.

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    Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.Optimization of systems plays an important role in various fields including mathematics, economics, engineering and life sciences. A lot of real world optimization problems exist across field of endeavours such as engineering design, space planning, networking, data analysis, logistic management, financial planning, risk management, and a host of others. These problems are constantly increasing in size and complexity, necessitating the need for improved techniques. Many conventional approaches have failed to solve complex problems effectively due to increasingly large solution space. This has led to the development of evolutionary algorithms that draw inspiration from the process of natural evolution. It is believed that nature provides inspirations that can lead to innovative models or techniques for solving complex optimization problems. Among the class of paradigm based on this inspiration is Swarm Intelligence (SI). SI is one of the recent developments of evolutionary computation. A SI paradigm is comprised of algorithms inspired by the social behaviour of animals and insects. SI-based algorithms have attracted interest, gained popularity and attention because of their flexibility and versatility. SIbased algorithms have been found to be efficient in solving real world optimization problems. Examples of SI algorithms include Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) inspired by the pheromone trail-following behaviour of ant species; Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) inspired by flocking and swarming behaviour of insects and animals; and Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) inspired by bees’ food foraging. Recent emerging techniques in SI includes Roach-based Algorithms (RBA) motivated by cockroaches social behaviour. Two recently introduced RBA algorithms are Roach Infestation Optimization (RIO) and Cockroach Swarm Optimization (CSO) which have been applied to some optimization problems to achieve competitive results when compared to PSO. This study is motivated by the promising results of RBA, which have shown that the algorithms have potentials to be efficient tools for solving optimization problems. Extensive studies of existing RBA were carried out in this work revealing the shortcomings such as slow convergence and entrapment in local minima. The aim of this study is to overcome the identified drawbacks. We investigate RBA variants that are introduced in this work by introducing parameters such as constriction factor and sigmoid function that have proved effective for similar evolutionary algorithms in the literature. In addition components such as vigilance, cannibalism and hunger are incorporated into existing RBAs. These components are constructed by the use of some known techniques such as simple Euler, partial differential equation, crossover and mutation methods to speed up convergence and enhance the stability, exploitation and exploration of RBA. Specifically, a stochastic constriction factor was introduced to the existing CSO algorithm to improve its performance and enhance its ability to solve optimization problems involving thousands of variables. A CSO algorithm that was originally designed with three components namely chase-swarming, dispersion and ruthlessness is extended in this work with hunger component to improve its searching ability and diversity. Also, predator-prey evolution using crossover and mutation techniques were introduced into the CSO algorithm to create an adaptive search in each iteration thereby making the algorithm more efficient. In creating a discrete version of a CSO algorithm that can be used to evaluate optimization problems with any discrete range value, we introduced the sigmoid function. Furthermore, a dynamic step-size adaptation with simple Euler method was introduced to the existing RIO algorithm enhancing swarm stability and improving local and global searching abilities. The existing RIO model was also re-designed with the inclusion of vigilance and cannibalism components. The improved RBA were tested on established global optimization benchmark problems and results obtained compared with those from the literature. The improved RBA introduced in this work show better improvements over existing ones

    Comprehensive Taxonomies of Nature- and Bio-inspired Optimization: Inspiration versus Algorithmic Behavior, Critical Analysis and Recommendations

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    In recent years, a great variety of nature- and bio-inspired algorithms has been reported in the literature. This algorithmic family simulates different biological processes observed in Nature in order to efficiently address complex optimization problems. In the last years the number of bio-inspired optimization approaches in literature has grown considerably, reaching unprecedented levels that dark the future prospects of this field of research. This paper addresses this problem by proposing two comprehensive, principle-based taxonomies that allow researchers to organize existing and future algorithmic developments into well-defined categories, considering two different criteria: the source of inspiration and the behavior of each algorithm. Using these taxonomies we review more than three hundred publications dealing with nature-inspired and bio-inspired algorithms, and proposals falling within each of these categories are examined, leading to a critical summary of design trends and similarities between them, and the identification of the most similar classical algorithm for each reviewed paper. From our analysis we conclude that a poor relationship is often found between the natural inspiration of an algorithm and its behavior. Furthermore, similarities in terms of behavior between different algorithms are greater than what is claimed in their public disclosure: specifically, we show that more than one-third of the reviewed bio-inspired solvers are versions of classical algorithms. Grounded on the conclusions of our critical analysis, we give several recommendations and points of improvement for better methodological practices in this active and growing research field.Comment: 76 pages, 6 figure

    Swarm Robotic Systems with Minimal Information Processing

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    This thesis is concerned with the design and analysis of behaviors in swarm robotic systems using minimal information acquisition and processing. The motivation for this work is to contribute in paving the way for the implementation of swarm robotic systems at physically small scales, which will open up new application domains for their operation. At these scales, the space and energy available for the integration of sensors and computational hardware within the individual robots is at a premium. As a result, trade-offs in performance can be justified if a task can be achieved in a more parsimonious way. A framework is developed whereby meaningful collective behaviors in swarms of robots can be shown to emerge without the robots, in principle, possessing any run-time memory or performing any arithmetic computations. This is achieved by the robots having only discrete-valued sensors, and purely reactive controllers. Black-box search methods are used to automatically synthesize these controllers for desired collective behaviors. This framework is successfully applied to two canonical tasks in swarm robotics: self-organized aggregation of robots, and self-organized clustering of objects by robots. In the case of aggregation, the robots are equipped with one binary sensor, which informs them whether or not there is another robot in their line of sight. This makes the structure of the robots’ controller simple enough that its entire space can be systematically searched to locate the optimal controller (within a finite resolution). In the case of object clustering, the robots’ sensor is extended to have three states, distinguishing between robots, objects, and the background. This still requires no run-time memory or arithmetic computations on the part of the robots. It is statistically shown that the extension of the sensor to have three states leads to a better performance as compared to the cases where the sensor is binary, and cannot distinguish between robots and objects, or robots and the background

    Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Models, Optimization, and Machine Learning

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    The present book contains all the articles accepted and published in the Special Issue “Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Models, Optimization, and Machine Learning” of the MDPI Mathematics journal, which covers a wide range of topics connected to the theory and applications of artificial intelligence and its subfields. These topics include, among others, deep learning and classic machine learning algorithms, neural modelling, architectures and learning algorithms, biologically inspired optimization algorithms, algorithms for autonomous driving, probabilistic models and Bayesian reasoning, intelligent agents and multiagent systems. We hope that the scientific results presented in this book will serve as valuable sources of documentation and inspiration for anyone willing to pursue research in artificial intelligence, machine learning and their widespread applications

    Monte Carlo Method with Heuristic Adjustment for Irregularly Shaped Food Product Volume Measurement

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    Volume measurement plays an important role in the production and processing of food products. Various methods have been proposed to measure the volume of food products with irregular shapes based on 3D reconstruction. However, 3D reconstruction comes with a high-priced computational cost. Furthermore, some of the volume measurement methods based on 3D reconstruction have a low accuracy. Another method for measuring volume of objects uses Monte Carlo method. Monte Carlo method performs volume measurements using random points. Monte Carlo method only requires information regarding whether random points fall inside or outside an object and does not require a 3D reconstruction. This paper proposes volume measurement using a computer vision system for irregularly shaped food products without 3D reconstruction based on Monte Carlo method with heuristic adjustment. Five images of food product were captured using five cameras and processed to produce binary images. Monte Carlo integration with heuristic adjustment was performed to measure the volume based on the information extracted from binary images. The experimental results show that the proposed method provided high accuracy and precision compared to the water displacement method. In addition, the proposed method is more accurate and faster than the space carving method

    Bio-Inspired Robotics

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    Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field

    Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

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    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

    Automated Reverse Engineering of Agent Behaviors

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    Formation and organisation in robot swarms.

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    A swarm is defined as a large and independent collection of heterogeneous or homogeneous agents operating in a common environment and seemingly acting in a coherent and coordinated manner. Swarm architectures promote decentralisation and self-organisation which often leads to emergent behaviour. The emergent behaviour of the swarm results from the interactions of the swarm with its environment (or fellow agents), but not as a direct result of design. The creation of artificially simulated swarms or practical robot swarms has become an interesting topic of research in the last decade. Even though many studies have been undertaken using a practical approach to swarm construction, there are still many problems need to be addressed. Such problems include the problem of how to control very simple agents to form patterns; the problem of how an attractor will affect flocking behaviour; and the problem of bridging formation of multiple agents in connecting multiple locations. The central goal of this thesis is to develop early novel theories and algorithms to support swarm robots in. pattern formation tasks. To achieve this, appropriate tools for understanding how to model, design and control individual units have to be developed. This thesis consists of three independent pieces of research work that address the problem of pattern formation of robot swarms in both a centralised and a decentralised way.The first research contribution proposes algorithms of line formation and cluster formation in a decentralised way for relatively simple homogenous agents with very little memory, limited sensing capabilities and processing power. This research utilises the Finite State Machine approach.In the second research contribution, by extending Wilensky's (1999) work on flocking, three different movement models are modelled by changing the maximum viewing angle each agent possesses during the course of changing its direction. An object which releases an artificial potential field is then introduced in the centre of the arena and the behaviours of the collective movement model are studied.The third research contribution studies the complex formation of agents in a task that requires a formation of agents between two locations. This novel research proposes the use Of L-Systems that are evolved using genetic algorithms so that more complex pattern formations can be represented and achieved. Agents will need to have the ability to interpret short strings of rules that form the basic DNA of the formation
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