A Variable Step Crow Search Algorithm and Its Application in Function Problems

Optimization algorithms are popular to solve different problems in many fields, and are inspired by natural principles, animal living habits, plant pollinations, chemistry principles, and physic principles. Optimization algorithm performances will directly impact on solving accuracy. The Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) is a simple and efficient algorithm inspired by the natural behaviors of crows. However, the flight length of CSA is a fixed value, which makes the algorithm fall into the local optimum, severely limiting the algorithm solving ability. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a Variable Step Crow Search Algorithm (VSCSA). The proposed algorithm uses the cosine function to enhance CSA searching abilities, which greatly improves both the solution quality of the population and the convergence speed. In the update phase, the VSCSA increases population diversities and enhances the global searching ability of the basic CSA. The experiment used 14 test functions,2017 CEC functions, and engineering application problems to compare VSCSA with different algorithms. The experiment results showed that VSCSA performs better in fitness values, iteration curves, box plots, searching paths, and the Wilcoxon test results, which indicates that VSCSA has strong competitiveness and sufficient superiority. The VSCSA has outstanding performances in various test functions and the searching accuracy has been greatly improved.