TRUST-TAEA: A trustworthiness-guided two-archive evolutionary algorithm with variable-grouping sparse search for large-scale multi-objective optimization

TL;DR

TRUST-TAEA is a novel trustworthiness-guided two-archive evolutionary algorithm designed for large-scale multi-objective optimization, improving search efficiency, convergence, and diversity by leveraging archive reliability and problem structure.

Contribution

It introduces a trustworthiness measure to guide variable-grouping sparse search and archive stabilization, enhancing performance on large-scale problems.

Findings

Outperforms existing algorithms on LSMOP benchmarks in convergence and diversity.

Achieves the best IGD+ value in a microgrid scheduling case.

Demonstrates practical applicability in complex real-world scenarios.

Abstract

Large-scale multi-objective optimization remains challenging because high-dimensional decision spaces, complex variable interactions, and limited function evaluation budgets make it difficult to balance convergence, diversity, and stability. Existing two-archive evolutionary algorithms can alleviate the conflict between convergence and diversity, but they often underuse archive reliability and problem-structure information, leading to inefficient search, incomplete front coverage, and late-stage archive drift. To address these issues, this paper proposes TRUST-TAEA, a trustworthiness-guided two-archive evolutionary algorithm. Archive trustworthiness is defined by integrating evolutionary progress with convergence-archive maturity, and is used to coordinate variable-grouping sparse search, anchor-probing compensatory search, and archive stabilization. TRUST-TAEA is evaluated on the LSMOP benchmark suite with 500--5000 decision variables and two or three objectives. Experimental results show that TRUST-TAEA achieves superior or highly competitive performance in terms of convergence, diversity, and stability. A three-objective day-ahead scheduling case of a grid-connected microgrid further demonstrates its practical applicability, where TRUST-TAEA obtains the best IGD$^+$ value and generates a feasible dispatch strategy balancing cost, emissions, and grid-power fluctuation.