An Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm Based on Factor Library and Dynamic Search Balance

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new optimization technique for simulating the honey bee swarms foraging behavior. Due to its simplicity and effectiveness, it has attracted much attention in recent years. However, ABC search equation is good at global search but poor at local search. Some different search equations are developed to tackle this problem, while there is no particular algorithm to substantially attain the best solution for all optimization problems. Therefore, we proposed an improved ABC with a new search equation, which incorporates the global search factor based on the optimization problem dimension and the local search factor based on the factor library (FL). Furthermore, aimed at preventing the algorithm from falling into local optima, dynamic search balance strategy is proposed and applied to replace the scout bee procedure in ABC. Thus, a hybrid, fast, and enhanced algorithm, HFEABC, is presented. In order to verify its effectiveness, some comprehensive tests among HFEABC and ABC and its variants are conducted on 21 basic benchmark functions and 20 complicated functions from CEC 2017. The experimental results show HFEABC offers better compatibility for different problems than ABC and some of its variants. The HFEABC performance is very competitive.