A non-dominated sorting based multi-objective neural network algorithm

Neural Network Algorithm (NNA) is a recently proposed Metaheuristic that is inspired by the idea of artificial neural networks. The performance of NNA on single-objective optimization problems is very promising and effective. In this article, a maiden attempt is made to restructure NNA for its possible use to address multi-objective optimization problems. To make NNA suitable for MOPs several fundamental changes in the original NNA are proposed. A novel concept is proposed to initialize the candidate solution, position update, and selection of target solution. To examine the optimization ability of the proposed scheme, it is tested on several benchmark problems and the results are compared with eight state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization algorithms. Inverse generational distance(IGD) and hypervolume (HV) metrics are also calculated to understand the optimization ability of the proposed scheme. The results are statistically validated using Wilcoxon signed rank test. It is observed that the overall optimization ability of the proposed scheme to solve MOPs is very good.•This paper proposes a method to solve multi-objective optimization problems.•A multi-objective Neural Network Algorithm method is proposed.•The proposed method solves difficult multi-objective optimization problems.