Research Area:  Metaheuristic Computing
Meta-heuristic algorithms have shown promising results in solving various optimization problems. The crow search algorithm (CSA) is a new and effective meta-heuristic algorithm that emulates crows’ intelligent group behavior in nature. However, it suffers from several problems, such as trapping into local optimum and premature convergence. This paper proposes an improved crow search algorithm (ICSA), which has been tested and evaluated by a set of well-known benchmark functions. A new update mechanism that uses the merits of the global best position to move toward the best position is proposed. This mechanism increases the convergence of the algorithm and improves its local search-ability. Twenty benchmark functions are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed ICSA. Moreover, the ICSA algorithm is compared with the conventional CSA and other meta-heuristic algorithms such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), dragonfly algorithm (DA), grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA), gray wolf optimizer (GWO), moth-flame optimization (MFO), and sine-cosine algorithm (SCA). The experimental result shows that the proposed ICSA algorithm has produced promising results and outperformed conventional CSA and other meta-heuristic algorithms. Also, the proposed ICSA has a more robust convergence for optimizing objective functions in terms of solution accuracy and efficiency.
Keywords:  
Meta-heuristic algorithms
crow search algorithm
intelligent group behavior
premature convergence
benchmark functions
objective functions
Author(s) Name:  Jafar Gholami, Farhad Mardukhi & Hossam M. Zawbaa
Journal name:  Soft Computing
Conferrence name:  
Publisher name:  Springer
DOI:  10.1007/s00500-021-05827-w
Volume Information:  volume 25, pages 9441–9454
Paper Link:   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00500-021-05827-w