Comparing the Robustness of Evolutionary Algorithms on the Basis of Benchmark Functions

In real-world optimization problems, even though the solution quality is of great importance, the robustness of the solution is also an important aspect. This paper investigates how the optimization algorithms are sensitive to the variations of control parameters and to the random initialization of the solution set for fixed control parameters. The comparison is performed of three well-known evolutionary algorithms which are Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm and the Harmony Search (HS) algorithm. Various benchmark functions with different characteristics are used for the evaluation of these algorithms. The experimental results show that the solution quality of the algorithms is not directly related to their robustness. In particular, the algorithm that is highly robust can have a low solution quality, or the algorithm that has a high quality of solution can be quite sensitive to the parameter variations.