An Improved Grasshopper Optimizer for Global Tasks

The grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) is a metaheuristic algorithm that mathematically models and simulates the behavior of the grasshopper swarm. Based on its flexible, adaptive search system, the innovative algorithm has an excellent potential to resolve optimization problems. This paper introduces an enhanced GOA, which overcomes the deficiencies in convergence speed and precision of the initial GOA. The improved algorithm is named MOLGOA, which combines various optimization strategies. Firstly, a probabilistic mutation mechanism is introduced into the basic GOA, which makes full use of the strong searchability of Cauchy mutation and the diversity of genetic mutation. Then, the effective factors of grasshopper swarm are strengthened by an orthogonal learning mechanism to improve the convergence speed of the algorithm. Moreover, the application of probability in this paper greatly balances the advantages of each strategy and improves the comprehensive ability of the original GOA. Note that several representative benchmark functions are used to evaluate and validate the proposed MOLGOA. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of MOLGOA over other well-known methods both on the unconstrained problems and constrained engineering design problems.