Wingsuit Flying Search—A Novel Global Optimization Algorithm

In this paper, a novel global optimization algorithm - Wingsuit Flying Search (WFS) is introduced. It is inspired by the popular extreme sport - wingsuit flying. The algorithm mimics the intention of a flier to land at the lowest possible point of the Earth surface within their range, i.e., a global minimum of the search space. This is achieved by probing the search space at each iteration with a carefully picked population of points. Iterative update of the population corresponds to the flier progressively getting a sharper image of the surface, thus shifting the focus to lower regions. The algorithm is described in detail, including the mathematical background and the pseudocode. It is validated using a variety of classical and CEC 2020 benchmark functions under a number of search space dimensionalities. The validation includes the comparison of WFS to several nature-inspired popular metaheuristic algorithms, including the winners of CEC 2017 competition. The numerical results indicate that WFS algorithm provides considerable performance improvements (mean solution values, standard deviation of solution values, runtime and convergence rate) with respect to other methods. The main advantages of this algorithm are that it is practically parameter-free, apart from the population size and maximal number of iterations. Moreover, it is considerably “lean” and easy to implement.