A Perturbation and Speciation-Based Algorithm for Dynamic Optimization Uninformed of Change

TL;DR

This paper introduces PSPSO, a novel uninformed dynamic optimization algorithm that adapts to changing environments without explicit change detection, outperforming existing methods on complex benchmarks.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new perturbation and speciation-based PSO algorithm that operates without environmental change information, enhancing adaptability in dynamic optimization problems.

Findings

PSPSO outperforms other uninformed algorithms across various scenarios.

The algorithm is particularly effective in high-dimensional and high-frequency change environments.

Ablation study confirms the significance of the random perturbation component.

Abstract

Dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) are challenging due to their changing conditions. This requires algorithms to be highly adaptable and efficient in terms of finding rapidly new optimal solutions under changing conditions. Traditional approaches often depend on explicit change detection, which can be impractical or inefficient when the change detection is unreliable or unfeasible. We propose Perturbation and Speciation-Based Particle Swarm Optimization (PSPSO), a robust algorithm for uninformed dynamic optimization without requiring the information of environmental changes. The PSPSO combines speciation-based niching, deactivation, and a newly proposed random perturbation mechanism to handle DOPs. PSPSO leverages a cyclical multi-population framework, strategic resource allocation, and targeted noisy updates, to adapt to dynamic environments. We compare PSPSO with several state-of-the-art algorithms on the Generalized Moving Peaks Benchmark (GMPB), which covers a variety of scenarios, including simple and multi-modal dynamic optimization, frequent and intense changes, and high-dimensional spaces. Our results show that PSPSO outperforms other state-of-the-art uninformed algorithms in all scenarios and leads to competitive results compared to informed algorithms. In particular, PSPSO shows strength in functions with high dimensionality or high frequency of change in the GMPB. The ablation study showed the importance of the random perturbation component.