Flower Pollination Algorithm for Global Optimization - Xin-She Yang 2013 The last of the optimisation algorithms we'll look at for now, today's paper is the most recent (2013) and also by Xin-She Yang. Once more, we only get comparisons to genetic algorithms and PSO, and once more the comparison is favourable. In many design applications ... Continue Reading

Cuckoo Search via Lévy Flights - Yang et al. 2010 Another nature inspired optimisation algorithm today - and this time it's the turn of the cuckoos coupled with the flight pattern of fruit flies (which follow a Lévy flight) A Lévy flight is a random walk in which the step-lengths follow a heavy-tailed probability distribution. ... Continue Reading

A New Metaheuristic Bat-Inspired Algorithm - Xin-She Yang, 2010 Today it's the turn of bats! The bat algorithm is an attempt to combine some of the major advantages of previous algorithms such as the firefly algorithm and harmony search (inspired by music composition). It is based on the echo-location behaviour of bats. Bats are fascinating ... Continue Reading

Firefly Algorithms for Multimodal Optimization - Xin-She Yang, 2010 This is the third post in a mini-series on nature-inspired optimisation algorithms. The flashing light of fireflies is an amazing sight in the summer sky in the tropical and temperate regions. There are about two thousand firefly species, and most fireflies produce short and rhythmic flashes. ... Continue Reading

Ant Algorithms for Discrete Optimization - Dorigo et al. 1999 It's the emergent behaviour in nature-inspired algorithms that excites me. Ant colonies provide a great example: although each individual ant is in principle capable of finding a solution, it is only the ensemble of ants - that is, the ant colony - that exhibits optimisation ... Continue Reading

Particle Swarm Optimization - Kennedy & Eberhart 1995 What do flocks of birds, schools of fish, ant colonies, bat echo-location, firefly flashlights, cuckoos, and flower-pollination all have in common? They've all inspired optimisation algorithms! I've been perusing Xin-She Yang's book on Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms and thought it might be fun to make a mini-series out ... Continue Reading