Gesture segmentation based on a two-phase estimation of distribution algorithm

Elephant Herding Optimization: Variants, Hybrids, and Applications

Elephant herding optimization (EHO) is a nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm based on the herding behavior of elephants. EHO uses a clan operator to update the distance of the elephants in each clan with respect to the position of a matriarch elephant. The superiority of the EHO method to several state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms has been demonstrated for many benchmark problems and in various application areas. A comprehensive review for the EHO-based algorithms and their applications are presented in this paper. Various aspects of the EHO variants for continuous optimization, combinatorial optimization, constrained optimization, and multi-objective optimization are reviewed. Future directions for research in the area of EHO are further discussed.

Hybrid Annealing Krill Herd and Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization

The particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) is not good at dealing with discrete optimization problems, and for the krill herd algorithm (KH), the ability of local search is relatively poor. In this paper, we optimized PSO by quantum behavior and optimized KH by simulated annealing, so a new hybrid algorithm, named the annealing krill quantum particle swarm optimization (AKQPSO) algorithm, is proposed, and is based on the annealing krill herd algorithm (AKH) and quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm (QPSO). QPSO has better performance in exploitation and AKH has better performance in exploration, so AKQPSO proposed on this basis increases the diversity of population individuals, and shows better performance in both exploitation and exploration. In addition, the quantum behavior increased the diversity of the population, and the simulated annealing strategy made the algorithm avoid falling into the local optimal value, which made the algorithm obtain better performance. The test set used in this paper is a classic 100-Digit Challenge problem, which was proposed at 2019 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2019), and AKQPSO has achieved better performance on benchmark problems.

Enhancing Gaussian Estimation of Distribution Algorithm by Exploiting Evolution Direction With Archive

As a typical model-based evolutionary algorithm, estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) possesses unique characteristics and has been widely applied in global optimization. However, the commonly used Gaussian EDA (GEDA) usually suffers from premature convergence, which severely limits its search efficiency. This paper first systematically analyzes the reasons for the deficiency of traditional GEDA, then tries to enhance its performance by exploiting the evolution direction, and finally develops a new GEDA variant named EDA². Instead of only utilizing some good solutions produced in the current generation to estimate the Gaussian model, EDA² preserves a certain number of high-quality solutions generated in the previous generations into an archive and employs these historical solutions to assist estimating the covariance matrix of Gaussian model. By this means, the evolution direction information hidden in the archive is naturally integrated into the estimated model, which in turn can guide EDA² toward more promising solution regions. Moreover, the new estimation method significantly reduces the population size of EDA² since it needs fewer individuals in the current population for model estimation. As a result, a fast convergence can be achieved. To verify the efficiency of EDA², we tested it on a variety of benchmark functions and compared it with several state-of-the-art EAs. The experimental results demonstrate that EDA² is efficient and competitive.

Novel Hand Gesture Alert System

. Sexual assault can cause great societal damage, with negative socio-economic, mental, sexual, physical and reproductive consequences. According to the Eurostat, the number of crimes increased in the European Union between 2008 and 2016. However, despite the increase in security tools such as cameras, it is usually difficult to know if an individual is subject to an assault based on his or her posture. Hand gestures are seen by many as the natural means of nonverbal communication when interacting with a computer, and a considerable amount of research has been performed. In addition, the identifiable hand placement characteristics provided by modern inexpensive commercial depth cameras can be used in a variety of gesture recognition-based systems, particularly for human-machine interactions. This paper introduces a novel gesture alert system that uses a combination of Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs). The overall system can be subdivided into three main parts: firstly, the human detection in the image using a pretrained “You Only Look Once (YOLO)” method, which extracts the related bounding boxes containing his/her hands; secondly, the gesture detection/classification stage, which processes the bounding box images; and thirdly, we introduced a module called “counterGesture”, which triggers the alert.

Enhancing Elephant Herding Optimization with Novel Individual Updating Strategies for Large-Scale Optimization Problems

Inspired by the behavior of elephants in nature, elephant herd optimization (EHO) was proposed recently for global optimization. Like most other metaheuristic algorithms, EHO does not use the previous individuals in the later updating process. If the useful information in the previous individuals were fully exploited and used in the later optimization process, the quality of solutions may be improved significantly. In this paper, we propose several new updating strategies for EHO, in which one, two, or three individuals are selected from the previous iterations, and their useful information is incorporated into the updating process. Accordingly, the final individual at this iteration is generated according to the elephant generated by the basic EHO, and the selected previous elephants through a weighted sum. The weights are determined by a random number and the fitness of the elephant individuals at the previous iteration. We incorporated each of the six individual updating strategies individually into the basic EHO, creating six improved variants of EHO. We benchmarked these proposed methods using sixteen test functions. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed improved methods significantly outperformed the basic EHO.

An Improved Differential Evolution Algorithm for Crop Planning in the Northeastern Region of Thailand

This research aimed to solve the economic crop planning problem, considering transportation logistics to maximize the profit from cultivated activities. Income is derived from the selling price and production rate of the plants; costs are due to operating and transportation expenses. Two solving methods are presented: (1) developing a mathematical model and solving it using Lingo v.11, and (2) using three improved Differential Evolution (DE) Algorithms—I-DE-SW, I-DE-CY, and I-DE-KV—which are DE with swap, cyclic moves (CY), and K-variables moves (KV) respectively. The algorithms were tested by 16 test instances, including this case study. The computational results showed that Lingo v.11 and all DE algorithms can find the optimal solution eight out of 16 times. Regarding the remaining test instances, Lingo v.11 was unable to find the optimal solution within 400 h. The results for the DE algorithms were compared with the best solution generated within that time. The DE solutions were 1.196–1.488% better than the best solution generated by Lingo v.11 and used 200 times less computational time. Comparing the three DE algorithms, MDE-KV was the DE that was the most flexible, with the biggest neighborhood structure, and outperformed the other DE algorithms.