1. Overview
There are various optimization algorithms in computer science, and the Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm (GOA) is one of them. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at what this algorithm means and what it does.
Then, we’ll go through the steps of the GOA algorithm. In addition to a numerical example demonstrating the solution of an optimization issue using GOA, we’ll discuss its benefits and drawbacks.
2. What Is the Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm?
GOA is a meta-heuristics algorithm and a population-based algorithm. As implied by the name, this algorithm was proposed for solving numerical optimization issues by Saremi and Mirjalili, 2017. It’s a recent swarm intelligence algorithm. The inspiration for GOA comes, in particular, from the behavior and the interaction of grasshopper swarms in nature.
3. Who Are the Grasshoppers?
Grasshoppers are harmful and destructive insects because of the extensive damage they cause to crops. Let’s take a look at the life cycle of grasshoppers, which has three phases:
- Egg: The initial phase involves egg-laying in a pod on the ground near a feeding plant in the summer. This stage lasts a few weeks before going into diapause in the winter. Then, as soon as the ground temperature increases, the egg resumes its development and hatch to become first instar Nymph
- Nymph: They mature in stages, with each instar becoming more and more like an adult. The first instar nymph doesn’t have wings. However, the nymph has to go through six stages to become an adult, and the wing-buds grow in size at each stage. Therefore, they move slowly and eat each vegetation on their path
- Adulthood: The wings are expanded and fully functional after the final instar stage. So, they form a swarm in the air and move fast to a large-scale region
In short, the Grasshopper life cycle may resemble the image below:
Let’s now investigate the main characteristic of the grasshopper swarm:
- The swarm moves slowly using small steps in the nymph phase because they don’t have wings
- The grasshopper swarm can make sudden jumps and long-range moves in the phase of adulthood because they have wings. This phase represents the main idea behind the GOA algorithm
- The swarm searches for food by splitting the process into two stages: exploration and exploitation. The graph below presents these phases:
In the exploration phase, the swarm search for food sources. Thus, in this stage, we update all the value positions of the grasshopper and compute the fitness value. In the exploration phase, we find the best solution among all solutions (search for better food sources).
4. Mathematical Model of the Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm
The GOA algorithm mimics the social behavior and hunting method of grasshoppers in nature. It’s a population-based algorithm, with each grasshopper representing a solution in the population. So, how do we determine the position of each solution in the swarm?
It’s simple, we only need to calculate three forces: the social interaction between the solution and the other grasshoppers, the wind advection, and the gravity force on the solution. Let’s now have a look at the mathematical model used to calculate the position of each solution:
(1)
where represents the social interaction between the solution and the other grasshoppers, represents the gravity force on the solution, and represents the wind advection. The equation below represents the position of each solution after adding random behavior to it:
(2)
where and are random numbers in [0, 1]. Let’s now have a look at the model of each force used in Equation 1.
4.1. Force of Social Interaction
Let’s firstly start with the force of social interaction . The equation below represents the social interaction between the solution and the other grasshoppers:
(3)
(4)
where represents the distance between grasshopper and the grasshopper, represents the unit vector. In addition, represents the strength of two social forces (repulsion and attraction between grasshoppers), where is the attractive length scale and is the intensity of attraction. In fact, these cofficients and have a great impact in the social behavior of grasshoppers.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the strength of these social forces. When the distance between two grasshoppers is between , repulsion occurs, and when the distance between two grasshoppers is , neither attraction nor repulsion occurs, which form a comfort zone. When the distance exceeds , the attraction force increases, then progressively decreases until it reaches .
The function fails to apply forces between grasshoppers when the distance between them is larger than . In order to solve this problem, we map the distance of grasshoppers in the interval . The graph below explains the social interaction in more detail:
4.2. Force of Gravity
Let’s now move forward to the second force, which is the force of gravity. The equation below shows how to calculate the force of gravity :
(5)
where represents the gravitational constant and is unit vector toward center of earth.
4.3. Force of Wind Direction
Afterward, we investigate the force of wind direction, which greatly impacts the nymphs and adulthood grasshoppers. As a result, the movements of nymph and adulthood grasshoppers are correlated with the wind direction . The equation below shows how to compute :
(6)
where represents the drift constant and is the unit vector in the wind direction.
4.4. Grasshopper Position
Let’s reconstruct Equation 1 using Equations 3, 4, 5 and 6:
(7)
In order to solve optimization issues and prevent grasshoppers from quickly reaching their comfort zone and the swarm from failing to converge to the target location (global optimum), we’ll make some modifications in Equation 7:
(8)
where , is the best solution in the dimension, and and are the upper and lower bounds in the dimension, respectively.
The parameter represents the decreasing coefficient, and it is in charge of decreasing the comfort zone, repulsion zone, and attraction zone. In order to balance the exploration and the exploitation phases using the grasshopper approach, the coefficient decreases according to the number of iterations. Here’s the model for :
(9)
where and are the maximum and minimum values of respectively, is the current iteration, and is the maximum number of iterations.
5. Steps of GOA Algorithm
Let’s now take a look at the implementation of the GOA optimizer:
algorithm GrasshopperOptimizer(iter, c_max, c_min, l, f, n, Max_iter):
// INPUT
// c_max = maximum value of the coefficient c
// c_min = minimum value of the coefficient c
// l = attractive length scale
// f = intensity of attraction
// n = number of grasshoppers (search agents)
// Max_iter = maximum number of iterations
// OUTPUT
// The best found solution
// Initialize the swarm
grasshoppers <- initialize n solutions (X_1, X_2, ..., X_n)
Compute the fitness of each grasshopper
Find the best solution
iter <- 0
while iter < Max_iter:
Update c using Equation 9
for grasshopper in grasshoppers:
Normalize distance between grasshopper in the range [1, 4]
Update the position of grasshopper using Equation 8
Bring current grasshopper back if it goes outside the boundaries
Update the best solution if there is a better one
iter <- iter + 1
return the best solution
As we can see in the algorithm, we start by initializing the parameters {} and the grasshopper population . Then, we evaluate each solution by calculating its value using the fitness function. After evaluating each solution in the population, we assign the best solution according to its value. Afterward, we update the coefficient parameter to shrink the attraction, repulsion, and comfort zones (Equation 9).
The function (Equation 4) divides the search space into repulsion, comfort, and attraction zones. As explained in Section 4.1, when the function fails to apply forces between the grasshoppers, we map the distance in the interval .
Then, we update each solution in the population based on the distance between the grasshopper (the solution) and the other grasshopper (the other solution). We also update the best solution in the population and the decreasing coefficient parameter using Equation 8.
In the case of a grasshopper violating the boundaries after updating the solution, we bring the grasshopper back to its domain. Then, we repeat the previous three steps for each solution in the population.
Afterward, we update and evaluate each solution to assign the best one in the population. We repeat the overall operations until we reach the maximum number of iterations to return the best global solution.
It is worth noting that the time complexity of the grasshopper algorithm is generally related to the number of iterations and the number of agents. So, represents the time complexity of this algorithm with is the number of agents and is the number of iterations.
6. Numerical Example of Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm
To understand the grasshopper optimizer algorithm, we use a numerical example.
6.1. Initialization
Firstly, we randomly initialize the population of grasshopper , where . Afterward, we initialize all the parameters , and using a random set of values:
6.2. Compute the Fitness Value
Here’s the fitness function in order to calculate the fitness value for each grasshopper:
Let’s calculate the fitness value for each grasshopper in the current population using the fitness function:
Sr. No
X(1)
X(2)
Fitness Value
1.
2.
3.
4.
6.3. Optimal Solution and Check the Condition
After calculating all the fitness values, we have to select the optimal solution among all. The optimal solution is the one that has the smallest fitness value across all grasshoppers. As a result, is the best solution for the first iteration. Let’s move forward to check the condition. Notice that the number of iteration and the , which means condition true . As a result, we move to the next step.
6.4. Normalization of the Distance
We need to compute in order to normalize the distance between grasshoppers using the equations below:
(10)
(11)
Here’s the result of normalizing the distance between grasshoppers:
Sr. No
Distance(1)
Distance(2)
1.
0.0058
-0.1533
2.
-0.0756
0.13648
3.
0.1565
-0.0275
4.
-0.0867
-0.0106
6.5. Update Position
To update the position for each grasshopper using Equation 8, we require the current position of the grasshopper (calculated in section 6.2), the best solution found (calculated in section 6.3), and other grasshopper positions (calculated using the distance in section 6.4). Here’s the new position for grasshoppers:
Sr. No
New Position X(1)
New Position X(2)
1.
3.1519
1.2009
2.
3.0867
1.4328
3.
3.1472
1.3236
4.
3.0778
1.3151
We got the values of the new position by adding the best solution found to .
6.6. Compute the New Fitness Value
Before computing the new fitness value, we bring the current grasshopper back if it goes outside boundaries . The table in section 6.5 shows that all grasshoppers are within the boundary. So, let’s now compute the new fitness values for each grasshopper in the current population:
Sr. No
New Fitness Value
1.
165.6341
2.
148.8582
3.
221.6412
4.
141.9027
6.7. Best Global Solution
We check if there’s any new best solution to update the best solution. To do that, we compare the old fitness value with the new fitness value for each grasshopper. After comparing the old and the new fitness values , we update the and we increment the counter. Then, we repeat the until reaching . If then stop the && return the . The fitness values for each iteration are presented in the tables below:
Sr. No
iter = 1
iter = 2
iter = 3
iter = 4
iter = 5
1.
166.9550
165.6341
142.5585
134.8152
130.3828
2.
1.9531
148.8582
146.0272
133.5261
131.2371
3.
631.9194
221.6412
132.7805
130.4732
127.6477
4.
1.1196
141.9027
146.6758
134.3392
132.6764
Sr. No
iter = 6
iter = 7
iter = 8
iter = 9
1.
127.5254
128.8573
127.8801
124.4451
2.
128.0198
126.1510
125.0144
124.4797
3.
125.9585
124.4605
124.3374
124.3374
4.
138.1068
126.8684
125.3856
124.5798
7. Advantages and Disadvantages of GOA Algorithm
Same as any optimizer algorithm, the GOA algorithm has its benefits and drawbacks. Let’s then take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of the GOA algorithm:
Advantages
Disadvantages
Effective in solving global unconstrained and constrained optimization problems
Easy development
High accuracy
Obtain good solutions
Easy to fall into local optimum
Slow convergence speed
8. Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the grasshopper optimization algorithm using a numerical example to unlock its mechanism. This algorithm searches for an optimal global solution to a problem using the swarm population in nature. We introduced this algorithm because it’s highly effective in solving global unconstrained and constrained optimization issues.