Application of a novel metaheuristic algorithm inspired by stadium spectators in global optimization problems

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a novel metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the actions of stadium spectators affecting behavior of players during a match which will be called stadium spectators optimizer (SSO) algorithm. The mathematical model of the SSO algorithm is presented and the performance and efficiency of the presented method is tested on some of the well-known mathematical test functions and also CEC-BC-2017 functions. The SSO algorithm is a parameter-free optimization method since it doesn't require any additional parameter setup at any point throughout the optimization process. It seems urgently necessary to design a novel metaheuristic algorithm that is parameter-free and capable of solving any optimization problem without taking into account extra parameters, as the majority of metaheuristic algorithms rely on the configuration of extra parameters to solve different problems efficiently. A positive point for the SSO algorithm can be seen in the results of the suggested technique, which indicate a partial improvement in performance. The results are compared with those of golf optimization algorithm (GOA), Tiki taka optimization algorithm (TTA), Harris Hawks optimization algorithm (HHO), the arithmetic optimization algorithm (AOA), CMA-ES and EBOwithCMAR algorithms. The statistical tests are carried out for the obtained results and the tests reveal the capability of the presented method in solving different optimization problems with different dimensions. SSO algorithm performs comparably and robustly with the state-of-the-art optimization techniques in 14 of the mathematical test functions. For CEC-BC-2017 functions with ten dimensions, EBOwithCMAR performs better than the proposed method. However, for most functions of CEC-BC-2017 with ten dimensions, the SSO algorithm ranks second after EBOwithCMAR, which is an advantage of the SSO since the proposed method performs better than the well-known CMA-ES optimization algorithm. The overall performance of the SSO algorithm in CEC-BC-2017 functions with 10 dimensions was acceptable, in dimension of 30, 50 and 100, the performance of the proposed method in some functions decreased.