Proactive Particles in Swarm Optimization: A settings-free algorithm for real-parameter single objective optimization problems

Abstract

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is an effective Swarm Intelligence technique for the optimization of non-linear and complex high-dimensional problems. Since PSO's performance is strongly dependent on the choice of its functioning settings, in this work we consider a self-tuning version of PSO, called Proactive Particles in Swarm Optimization (PPSO). PPSO leverages Fuzzy Logic to dynamically determine the best settings for the inertia weight, cognitive factor and social factor. The PPSO algorithm significantly differs from other versions of PSO relying on Fuzzy Logic, because specific settings are assigned to each particle according to its history, instead of being globally assigned to the whole swarm. In such a way, PPSO's particles gain a limited autonomous and proactive intelligence with respect to the reactive agents proposed by PSO. Our results show that PPSO achieves overall good optimization performances on the benchmark functions proposed in the CEC 2017 test suite, with the exception of those based on the Schwefel function, whose fitness landscape seems to mislead the fuzzy reasoning. Moreover, with many benchmark functions, PPSO is characterized by a higher speed of convergence than PSO in the case of high-dimensional problems.