Efficient state transition algorithm with guaranteed optimality

As a constructivism-based intelligent optimization method, state transition algorithm (STA) has exhibited powerful search ability in optimization. However, the standard STA still shows slow convergence at a later stage for flat landscape and a user has to preset its maximum number of iterations (or function evaluations) by experience. To resolve these two issues, efficient state transition algorithm is proposed with guaranteed optimality. Firstly, novel translation transformations based on predictive modeling are proposed to generate more potential candidates by utilizing historical information. Secondly, parameter control strategies are proposed to accelerate the convergence. Thirdly, a specific termination condition is designed to guarantee that the STA can stop automatically at an optimal point, which is equivalent to the zero gradient in mathematical programming. Experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.