Multiobjective multitasking optimization assisted by multidirectional prediction method

Multiobjective multitasking optimization (MTO) is an emerging research topic in the field of evolutionary computation, which has attracted extensive attention, and many evolutionary multitasking (EMT) algorithms have been proposed. One of the core issues, designing an efficient transfer strategy, has been scarcely explored. Keeping this in mind, this paper is the first attempt to design an efficient transfer strategy based on multidirectional prediction method. Specifically, the population is divided into multiple classes by the binary clustering method, and the representative point of each class is calculated. Then, an effective prediction direction method is developed to generate multiple prediction directions by representative points. Afterward, a mutation strength adaptation method is proposed according to the improvement degree of each class. Finally, the predictive transferred solutions are generated as transfer knowledge by the prediction directions and mutation strengths. By the above process, a multiobjective EMT algorithm based on multidirectional prediction method is presented. Experiments on two MTO test suits indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective and competitive to other state-of-the-art EMT algorithms.