Proactive Particles in Swarm Optimization: A self-tuning algorithm based on Fuzzy Logic

Among the existing global optimization algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is one of the most effective when dealing with non-linear and complex high-dimensional problems. However, the performance of PSO is strongly dependent on the choice of its settings. In this work we propose a novel and self-tuning PSO algorithm - called Proactive Particles in Swarm Optimization (PPSO) - which exploits Fuzzy Logic to calculate the best setting for the inertia, cognitive factor and social factor. Thanks to additional heuristics, PPSO automatically determines also the best setting for the swarm size and for the particles maximum velocity. PPSO significantly differs from other versions of PSO that exploit Fuzzy Logic, since specific settings are assigned to each particle according to its history, instead of being globally defined for the whole swarm. Thus, the novelty of PPSO is that particles gain a limited autonomous and proactive intelligence, instead of being simple reactive agents. Our results show that PPSO outperforms the standard PSO, both in terms of convergence speed and average quality of solutions, remarkably without the need for any user setting.