The Bat algorithm is a

metaheuristic In computer science and mathematical optimization, a metaheuristic is a higher-level procedure or heuristic designed to find, generate, or select a heuristic (partial search algorithm) that may provide a sufficiently good solution to an optimizatio ...

algorithm for

global optimization Global optimization is a branch of applied mathematics and numerical analysis that attempts to find the global minima or maxima of a function or a set of functions on a given set. It is usually described as a minimization problem because the max ...

. It was inspired by the echolocation behaviour of

microbats Microbats constitute the suborder Microchiroptera within the order Chiroptera ( bats). Bats have long been differentiated into Megachiroptera (megabats) and Microchiroptera, based on their size, the use of echolocation by the Microchiroptera an ...

, with varying pulse rates of emission and loudness. The Bat algorithm was developed by Xin-She Yang in 2010.

Metaphor

The idealization of the echolocation of microbats can be summarized as follows: Each virtual bat flies randomly with a velocity

v_i

at position (solution)

x_i

with a varying frequency or wavelength and loudness

A_i

. As it searches and finds its prey, it changes frequency, loudness and pulse emission rate

r

. Search is intensified by a local

random walk In mathematics, a random walk is a random process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space. An elementary example of a random walk is the random walk on the integer number line \mathbb ...

. Selection of the best continues until certain stop criteria are met. This essentially uses a frequency-tuning technique to control the dynamic behaviour of a swarm of bats, and the balance between exploration and exploitation can be controlled by tuning algorithm-dependent parameters in bat algorithm. A detailed introduction of metaheuristic algorithms including the bat algorithm is given by Yang where a demo program in

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

GNU Octave GNU Octave is a high-level programming language primarily intended for scientific computing and numerical computation. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a lang ...

is available, while a comprehensive review is carried out by Parpinelli and Lopes. A further improvement is the development of an evolving bat algorithm (EBA) with better efficiency.

Metaphor

See also

References

Further reading