Anarchy in the swarm: Testing informed and uninformed diversity-enhancing mechanisms within PSO framework

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) frequently suffers from premature convergence. This paper introduces a family of problem-informed diversity-enhancing strategies that manipulate the swarm's social and cognitive components. These include opposing-best strategies that repel particles from optimal regions, negative learning strategies that guide exploration toward poor solutions, and reverse learning strategies that push particles away from inferior regions. These socio-cognitive mechanisms are evaluated against an analogous suite of problem-unaware, explicit randomization strategies that inject randomness either into velocity update components or directly into position updates. The results reveal that the effectiveness of diversity enhancement is determined primarily by how it is embedded within the swarm dynamics, rather than by the mere presence of extraneous problem-informed guidance. Particularly, random perturbations introduced at the velocity-update level consistently outperform those applied directly to particle positions.

TOPSIS-like metaheuristic for LABS problem

This paper presents the application of socio-cognitive mutation operators inspired by the TOPSIS method to the Low Autocorrelation Binary Sequence (LABS) problem. Traditional evolutionary algorithms, while effective, often suffer from premature convergence and poor exploration-exploitation balance. To address these challenges, we introduce socio-cognitive mutation mechanisms that integrate strategies of following the best solutions and avoiding the worst. By guiding search agents to imitate high-performing solutions and avoid poor ones, these operators enhance both solution diversity and convergence efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that TOPSIS-inspired mutation outperforms the base algorithm in optimizing LABS sequences. The study highlights the potential of socio-cognitive learning principles in evolutionary computation and suggests directions for further refinement.

Sequential, Parallel and Consecutive Hybrid Evolutionary-Swarm Optimization Metaheuristics

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it explores hybrid evolutionary-swarm metaheuristics that combine the features of PSO and GA in a sequential, parallel and consecutive manner in comparison with their standard basic form: Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization. The algorithms were tested on a set of benchmark functions, including Ackley, Griewank, Levy, Michalewicz, Rastrigin, Schwefel, and Shifted Rotated Weierstrass, across multiple dimensions. The experimental results demonstrate that the hybrid approaches achieve superior convergence and consistency, especially in higher-dimensional search spaces. The second goal of this paper is to introduce a novel consecutive hybrid PSO-GA evolutionary algorithm that ensures continuity between PSO and GA steps through explicit information transfer mechanisms, specifically by modifying GA's variation operators to inherit velocity and personal best information.