Balancing individual and collective strategies: A new approach in metaheuristic optimization

Metaheuristic approaches commonly disregard the individual strategies of each agent within a population, focusing primarily on the collective best solution discovered so far. While this methodology can yield promising results, it also has several significant drawbacks, such as premature convergence. This study introduces a new metaheuristic approach that emphasizes the balance between individual and social learning in agents. In this approach, each agent employs two strategies: an individual search technique performed by the agent and a social or collective strategy involving the best-known solution. The search strategy is considered a learning problem, and agents must adjust the use of both individual and social strategies accordingly. The equilibrium of this adjustment is determined by a counter randomly set for each agent, which determines the frequency of use invested in each strategy. This mechanism promotes diverse search patterns and fosters a dynamic and adaptive process, potentially improving problem-solving efficiency in intricate spaces. The proposed method was assessed by comparing it with several well-established metaheuristic algorithms using 21 test functions. The results demonstrate that the new method surpasses popular metaheuristic algorithms by offering superior solutions and attaining quicker convergence.