Many-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm with Adaptive Reference Vector

Convergence is always a major concern for many-objective optimization problems. Over the past few decades, various methods have been designed for measuring the convergence. However, according to our mathematical and empirical analyses, most of these methods are more focused on the convergence, and may neglect the exploration of boundary solutions, resulting in the incomplete Pareto fronts and the poor extent of spread achieved among the obtained non-dominated solutions. Regarding this issue, this paper proposes a Many-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm with Adaptive Reference Vector (MaOEA-ARV). In MaOEA-ARV, an adaptive reference vector strategy is designed to dynamically adjust the reference vectors according to the current distribution of candidate solutions for ensuring the spread and convergence simultaneously. Additionally, a hierarchical clustering strategy is employed to adaptively partition candidate solutions into multiple clusters for the diversity of candidate solutions. Experimental results on DTLZ, BT, ZDT and WFG test suites with up to 12 objectives demonstrate the effectiveness of MaOEA-ARV. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.