scholarly journals Multimodal Optimization by Covariance Matrix Self-Adaptation Evolution Strategy with Repelling Subpopulations

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Ahrari ◽  
Kalyanmoy Deb ◽  
Mike Preuss

During the recent decades, many niching methods have been proposed and empirically verified on some available test problems. They often rely on some particular assumptions associated with the distribution, shape, and size of the basins, which can seldom be made in practical optimization problems. This study utilizes several existing concepts and techniques, such as taboo points, normalized Mahalanobis distance, and the Ursem’s hill-valley function in order to develop a new tool for multimodal optimization, which does not make any of these assumptions. In the proposed method, several subpopulations explore the search space in parallel. Offspring of a subpopulation are forced to maintain a sufficient distance to the center of fitter subpopulations and the previously identified basins, which are marked as taboo points. The taboo points repel the subpopulation to prevent convergence to the same basin. A strategy to update the repelling power of the taboo points is proposed to address the challenge of basins of dissimilar size. The local shape of a basin is also approximated by the distribution of the subpopulation members converging to that basin. The proposed niching strategy is incorporated into the covariance matrix self-adaptation evolution strategy (CMSA-ES), a potent global optimization method. The resultant method, called the covariance matrix self-adaptation with repelling subpopulations (RS-CMSA), is assessed and compared to several state-of-the-art niching methods on a standard test suite for multimodal optimization. An organized procedure for parameter setting is followed which assumes a rough estimation of the desired/expected number of minima available. Performance sensitivity to the accuracy of this estimation is also studied by introducing the concept of robust mean peak ratio. Based on the numerical results using the available and the introduced performance measures, RS-CMSA emerges as the most successful method when robustness and efficiency are considered at the same time.

Algorithms ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Wei Li

The standard covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) is highly effective at locating a single global optimum. However, it shows unsatisfactory performance for solving multimodal optimization problems (MMOPs). In this paper, an improved algorithm based on the MA-ES, which is called the matrix adaptation evolution strategy with multi-objective optimization algorithm, is proposed to solve multimodal optimization problems (MA-ESN-MO). Taking advantage of the multi-objective optimization in maintaining population diversity, MA-ESN-MO transforms an MMOP into a bi-objective optimization problem. The archive is employed to save better solutions for improving the convergence of the algorithm. Moreover, the peaks found by the algorithm can be maintained until the end of the run. Multiple subpopulations are used to explore and exploit in parallel to find multiple optimal solutions for the given problem. Experimental results on CEC2013 test problems show that the covariance matrix adaptation with Niching and the multi-objective optimization algorithm (CMA-NMO), CMA Niching with the Mahalanobis Metric and the multi-objective optimization algorithm (CMA-NMM-MO), and matrix adaptation evolution strategy Niching with the multi-objective optimization algorithm (MA-ESN-MO) have overall better performance compared with the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES), matrix adaptation evolution strategy (MA-ES), CMA Niching (CMA-N), CMA-ES Niching with Mahalanobis Metric (CMA-NMM), and MA-ES-Niching (MA-ESN).


2012 ◽  
Vol 215-216 ◽  
pp. 133-137
Author(s):  
Guo Shao Su ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Zhen Xing Wu ◽  
Liu Bin Yan

Covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy algorithm (CMA-ES) is a newly evolution algorithm. It has become a powerful tool for solving highly nonlinear multi-peak optimization problems. In many real-world optimization problems, the location of multiple optima is often required in a search space. In order to evaluate the solution, thousands of fitness function evaluations are involved that is a time consuming or expensive processes. Therefore, conventional stochastic optimization methods meet a special challenge for a very large number of problem function evaluations. Aiming to overcome the shortcoming of stochastic optimization methods in the high calculation cost, a truss optimal method based on CMA-ES algorithm is proposed and applied to solve the section and shape optimization problems of trusses. The study results show that the method is feasible and has the advantages of high accuracy, high efficiency and easy implementation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalyanmoy Deb ◽  
Amit Saha

In a multimodal optimization task, the main purpose is to find multiple optimal solutions (global and local), so that the user can have better knowledge about different optimal solutions in the search space and as and when needed, the current solution may be switched to another suitable optimum solution. To this end, evolutionary optimization algorithms (EA) stand as viable methodologies mainly due to their ability to find and capture multiple solutions within a population in a single simulation run. With the preselection method suggested in 1970, there has been a steady suggestion of new algorithms. Most of these methodologies employed a niching scheme in an existing single-objective evolutionary algorithm framework so that similar solutions in a population are deemphasized in order to focus and maintain multiple distant yet near-optimal solutions. In this paper, we use a completely different strategy in which the single-objective multimodal optimization problem is converted into a suitable bi-objective optimization problem so that all optimal solutions become members of the resulting weak Pareto-optimal set. With the modified definitions of domination and different formulations of an artificially created additional objective function, we present successful results on problems with as large as 500 optima. Most past multimodal EA studies considered problems having only a few variables. In this paper, we have solved up to 16-variable test problems having as many as 48 optimal solutions and for the first time suggested multimodal constrained test problems which are scalable in terms of number of optima, constraints, and variables. The concept of using bi-objective optimization for solving single-objective multimodal optimization problems seems novel and interesting, and more importantly opens up further avenues for research and application.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Cuevas ◽  
Adolfo Reyna-Orta

Interest in multimodal optimization is expanding rapidly, since many practical engineering problems demand the localization of multiple optima within a search space. On the other hand, the cuckoo search (CS) algorithm is a simple and effective global optimization algorithm which can not be directly applied to solve multimodal optimization problems. This paper proposes a new multimodal optimization algorithm called the multimodal cuckoo search (MCS). Under MCS, the original CS is enhanced with multimodal capacities by means of (1) the incorporation of a memory mechanism to efficiently register potential local optima according to their fitness value and the distance to other potential solutions, (2) the modification of the original CS individual selection strategy to accelerate the detection process of new local minima, and (3) the inclusion of a depuration procedure to cyclically eliminate duplicated memory elements. The performance of the proposed approach is compared to several state-of-the-art multimodal optimization algorithms considering a benchmark suite of fourteen multimodal problems. Experimental results indicate that the proposed strategy is capable of providing better and even a more consistent performance over existing well-known multimodal algorithms for the majority of test problems yet avoiding any serious computational deterioration.


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