Continuous Dynamic Constrained Optimization With Ensemble of Locating and Tracking Feasible Regions Strategies

Abstract

Dynamic constrained optimization problems (DCOPs) are difficult to solve because both objective function and constraints can vary with time. Although DCOPs have drawn attention in recent years, little work has been performed to solve DCOPs with multiple dynamic feasible regions from the perspective of locating and tracking multiple feasible regions in parallel. Moreover, few benchmarks have been proposed to simulate the dynamics of multiple disconnected feasible regions. In this paper, first, the idea of tracking multiple feasible regions, originally proposed by Nguyen and Yao, is enhanced by specifically adopting multiple subpopulations. To this end, the dynamic species-based particle swam optimization (DSPSO), a representative multipopulation algorithm, is adopted. Second, an ensemble of locating and tracking feasible regions strategies is proposed to handle different types of dynamics in constraints. Third, two benchmarks are designed to simulate the DCOPs with dynamic constraints. The first benchmark, including two variants of G24 (called G24v and G24w), could control the size of feasible regions. The second benchmark, named moving feasible regions benchmark (MFRB), is highly configurable. The global optimum of MFRB is calculated mathematically for experimental comparisons. Experimental results on G24, G24v, G24w, and MFRB show that the DSPSO with the ensemble of strategies performs significantly better than the original DSPSO and other typical algorithms.