Biological Flower Pollination Algorithm with Orthogonal Learning Strategy and Catfish Effect Mechanism for Global Optimization Problems

The flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is a novel optimization technique derived from the pollination behavior of flowers. However, the shortcomings of the FPA, such as a tendency towards premature convergence and poor exploitation ability, confine its application in engineering problems. To further strengthen FPA optimization performance, an orthogonal learning (OL) strategy based on orthogonal experiment design (OED) is embedded into the local pollination operator. OED can predict the optimal factor level combination by constructing a smaller but representative test set based on an orthogonal array. Using this characteristic of OED, the OL strategy can extract a promising solution from various sources of experience information, which leads the population to a potentially reasonable search direction. Moreover, the catfish effect mechanism is introduced to focus on the worst individuals during the iteration process. This mechanism explores new valuable information and maintains superior population diversity. The experimental results on benchmark functions show that our proposed algorithm significantly enhances the performance of the basic FPA and offers stronger competitiveness than several state-of-the-art algorithms.