International Journal of Swarm Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation

Abstract

Labor Division Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Numerical Function Optimization

Renbin Xiao and Yingcong Wang

 Swarm intelligence is briefly defined as the collective behavior of decentralized and self-organized swarms. Self-organization and labor division are the two key components of swarm intelligence. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the most recent swarm intelligence-based algorithms. The behavior of bees in ABC algorithm satisfies the self-organization features, but there is no specific labor division mechanism in ABC algorithm. In this work, we propose an improved ABC algorithm called labor division artificial bee colony (LDABC) algorithm by incorporating the labor division mechanism into ABC algorithm, which is achieved by individual specialization and role plasticity. We specify three different search methods for employed bees, onlooker bees and scout bees to realize individual specialization, these search methods are related to food source quality, enable bees to maximize exploitation of food source. Role plasticity is achieved by combining with cellular automata, where the roles of bees are not static but vary with their surrounding environment, enable bees not to limit to one search method. The different search modes and the flexibility of the search behaviors make our algorithm achieve a better balance between exploration and exploitation. The experimental results tested on 13 benchmark functions and CEC-2013 test functions demonstrate a competitive performance.