Adaptive opposition slime mould algorithm

Recently, the slime mould algorithm (SMA) has become popular in function optimization, because it effectively uses exploration and exploitation to reach an optimal solution or near-optimal solution. However, the SMA uses two random search agents from the whole population to decide the future displacement and direction from the best search agents, which limits its exploitation and exploration. To solve this problem, we investigate an adaptive approach to decide whether opposition-based learning (OBL) will be used or not. Sometimes, the OBL is used to further increase the exploration. In addition, it maximizes the exploitation by replacing one random search agent with the best one in the position updating. The suggested technique is called an adaptive opposition slime mould algorithm (AOSMA). The qualitative and quantitative analysis of AOSMA is reported using 29 test functions that consisting of 23 classical test functions and 6 recently used composition functions from the IEEE CEC 2014 test suite. The results are compared with state-of-the-art optimization methods. Results presented in this paper show that AOSMA’s performance is better than other optimization algorithms. The AOSMA is evaluated using Wilcoxon’s rank-sum test. It also ranked one in Friedman’s mean rank test. The proposed AOSMA algorithm would be useful for function optimization to solve real-world engineering problems.