A study on particle swarm optimization and artificial bee colony algorithms for multilevel thresholding

Segmentation is a critical task in image processing. Bi-level segmentation involves dividing the whole image into partitions based on a threshold value, whereas multilevel segmentation involves multiple threshold values. A successful segmentation assigns proper threshold values to optimise a criterion such as entropy or between-class variance. High computational cost and inefficiency of an exhaustive search for the optimal thresholds leads to the use of global search heuristics to set the optimal thresholds. An emerging area in global heuristics is swarm-intelligence, which models the collective behaviour of the organisms. In this paper, two successful swarm-intelligence-based global optimisation algorithms, particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and artificial bee colony (ABC), have been employed to find the optimal multilevel thresholds. Kapur's entropy, one of the maximum entropy techniques, and between-class variance have been investigated as fitness functions. Experiments have been performed on test images using various numbers of thresholds. The results were assessed using statistical tools and suggest that Otsu's technique, PSO and ABC show equal performance when the number of thresholds is two, while the ABC algorithm performs better than PSO and Otsu's technique when the number of thresholds is greater than two. Experiments based on Kapur's entropy indicate that the ABC algorithm can be efficiently used in multilevel thresholding. Moreover, segmentation methods are required to have a minimum running time in addition to high performance. Therefore, the CPU times of ABC and PSO have been investigated to check their validity in real-time. The CPU time results show that the algorithms are scalable and that the running times of the algorithms seem to grow at a linear rate as the problem size increases.     

A tabu search algorithm for order acceptance and scheduling

We consider a make-to-order production system, where limited production capacity and order delivery requirements necessitate selective acceptance of the orders. Since tardiness penalties cause loss of revenue, scheduling and order acceptance decisions must be taken jointly to maximize total revenue. We present a tabu search algorithm that solves the order acceptance and scheduling problem on a single machine with release dates and sequence dependent setup times. We analyze the performance of the tabu search algorithm on an extensive set of test instances with up to 100 orders and compare it with two heuristics from the literature. In the comparison, we report optimality gaps which are calculated with respect to bounds generated from a mixed integer programming formulation. The results show that the tabu search algorithm gives near optimal solutions that are significantly better compared to the solutions given by the two heuristics. Furthermore, the run time of the tabu search algorithm is very small, even for 100 orders. The success of the proposed heuristic largely depends on its capability to incorporate in its search acceptance and scheduling decisions simultaneously.     

Artificial bee colony algorithm for large-scale problems and engineering design optimization

Engineering design problems are generally large scale or nonlinear or constrained optimization problems. The Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is a successful tool for optimizing unconstrained problems. In this work, the ABC algorithm is used to solve large scale optimization problems, and it is applied to engineering design problems by extending the basic ABC algorithm simply by adding a constraint handling technique into the selection step of the ABC algorithm in order to prefer the feasible regions of entire search space. Nine well-known large scale unconstrained test problems and five well-known constrained engineering problems are solved by using the ABC algorithm and the performance of ABC algorithm is compared against those of state-of-the-art algorithms.     

The Artificial Bee Colony algorithm in layer optimization for the maximum fundamental frequency of symmetrical laminated composite plates

In this study the layer optimization was carried out for maximizing the lowest (first) fundamental frequency of symmetrical laminated composite plates subjected to any combination of the three classical boundary conditions, and the applicability of the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm to the layer optimization was investigated. The finite element method was used for calculating the first natural frequencies of the laminated composite plates with various stacking sequences. The ABC algorithm maximizes the first natural frequency of the laminated composite plate defined as an objective function. The optimal stacking sequences were determined for two layer numbers, twenty boundary conditions and two plate length/width ratios. The outer layers of the composite plate had a stiffness increasing effect, and as the number of clamped plate edges was increased both he stiffness and natural frequency of the plate increased. The optimal stacking sequences were in good agreement with those determined by the Ritz-based layerwise optimization method (Narita 2003: J. Sound Vibration 263 (5), 1005–1016) as well as by the genetic algorithm method combined with the finite element method.     

A comprehensive survey on optimizing deep learning models by metaheuristics

Deep neural networks (DNNs), which are extensions of artificial neural networks, can learn higher levels of feature hierarchy established by lower level features by transforming the raw feature space to another complex feature space. Although deep networks are successful in a wide range of problems in different fields, there are some issues affecting their overall performance such as selecting appropriate values for model parameters, deciding the optimal architecture and feature representation and determining optimal weight and bias values. Recently, metaheuristic algorithms have been proposed to automate these tasks. This survey gives brief information about common basic DNN architectures including convolutional neural networks, unsupervised pre-trained models, recurrent neural networks and recursive neural networks. We formulate the optimization problems in DNN design such as architecture optimization, hyper-parameter optimization, training and feature representation level optimization. The encoding schemes used in metaheuristics to represent the network architectures are categorized. The evolutionary and selection operators, and also speed-up methods are summarized, and the main approaches to validate the results of networks designed by metaheuristics are provided. Moreover, we group the studies on the metaheuristics for deep neural networks based on the problem type considered and present the datasets mostly used in the studies for the readers. We discuss about the pros and cons of utilizing metaheuristics in deep learning field and give some future directions for connecting the metaheuristics and deep learning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive survey about metaheuristics used in deep learning field.

     

Human Activity Recognition Based on Parallel Approximation Kernel K-Means Algorithm

Recently, owing to the capability of mobile and wearable devices to sense daily human activity, human activity recognition (HAR) datasets have become a large-scale data resource. Due to the heterogeneity and nonlinearly separable nature of the data recorded by these sensors, the datasets generated require special techniques to accurately predict human activity and mitigate the considerable heterogeneity. Consequently, classic clustering algorithms do not work well with these data. Hence, kernelization, which converts the data into a new feature vector representation, is performed on nonlinearly separable data. This study aims to present a robust method to perform HAR data clustering to mitigate heterogeneity in data with minimal resource consumption. Therefore, we propose a parallel approximated clustering approach to handle the computational cost of big data by addressing noise, heterogeneity, and nonlinearity in data using data reduction, filtering, and approximated clustering methods on parallel computing environments that have not been previously addressed. Our key contribution is to treat HAR as big data implemented by approximation kernel K-means approaches and fill the gap between the HAR clustering cost and parallel computing fields. We implemented our approach on Google cloud on a parallel spark cluster, which helped us to process large-scale HAR data across multiple machines of clusters. The normalized mutual information is used as validation metric to assess the quality of the clustering algorithm. Additionally, the precision, recall, f-score metrics values are obtained somehow to compare the results with a classification technique. The experimental results of our clustering approach prove its effectiveness compared with a classification technique and can efficiently detect physical activity and mitigate the heterogeneity of the datasets.     

A survey on the Metaheuristics for Cryptanalysis of Substitution and Transposition Ciphers

This paper presents state-of-art cryptanalysis studies on attacks of the substitution and transposition ciphers using various metaheuristic algorithms. Traditional cryptanalysis methods employ an exhaustive search, which is computationally expensive. Therefore, metaheuristics have attracted the interest of researchers in the cryptanalysis field. Metaheuristic algorithms are known for improving the search for the optimum solution and include Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, Particle Swarm Optimization, Differential Evolution, Ant Colony, the Artificial Bee Colony, Cuckoo Search, and Firefly algorithms. The most important part of these various applications is deciding the fitness function to guide the search. This review presents how these algorithms have been implemented for cryptanalysis purposes. The paper highlights the results and findings of the studies and determines the gaps in the literature.     

A Survey and Systematic Categorization of Parallel K-Means and Fuzzy-C-Means Algorithms

Parallel processing has turned into one of the emerging fields of machine learning due to providing consistent work by performing several tasks simultaneously, enhancing reliability (the presence of more than one device ensures the workflow even if some devices disrupted), saving processing time and introducing low cost and high-performance computation units. This research study presents a survey of parallel K-means and Fuzzy-c-means clustering algorithms based on their implementations in parallel environments such as Hadoop, MapReduce, Graphical Processing Units, and multi-core systems. Additionally, the enhancement in parallel clustering algorithms is investigated as hybrid approaches in which K-means and Fuzzy-c-means clustering algorithms are integrated with metaheuristic and other traditional algorithms.     

Application of artificial bee colony algorithm for inverse modelling of a solar collector

This paper deals with the inverse analysis of a double-glazed flat-plate solar collector using the artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm. In domestic water heating, both low and high heat output from the solar collector is undesirable, so the solar collector is required to supply the hot water at a particular temperature only, which in turn requires a given distribution of heat loss factor. With this criterion, the present analysis is aimed at predicting feasible dimensions and configurations of a solar collector satisfying a prescribed distribution of heat loss factor using ABC algorithm. It is observed that many feasible alternatives of unknowns exist which satisfy a prescribed requirement, and using the ABC algorithm, the size of the solar collector can be minimised by 6–32% with reference to the existing records. The effects of changing ambient conditions are also studied. Furthermore, a comparative study of the ABC algorithm against other heuristic algorithms reveals its suitability and efficacy for the present estimation problem.     

A survey: algorithms simulating bee swarm intelligence

Swarm intelligence is an emerging area in the field of optimization and researchers have developed various algorithms by modeling the behaviors of different swarm of animals and insects such as ants, termites, bees, birds, fishes. In 1990s, Ant Colony Optimization based on ant swarm and Particle Swarm Optimization based on bird flocks and fish schools have been introduced and they have been applied to solve optimization problems in various areas within a time of two decade. However, the intelligent behaviors of bee swarm have inspired the researchers especially during the last decade to develop new algorithms. This work presents a survey of the algorithms described based on the intelligence in bee swarms and their applications.