A novel heuristic algorithm for solving engineering optimization and real-world problems: People identity attributes-based information-learning search optimization

With the scale and dimension of engineering optimization and real-world problems increasing, it will be difficult to find the optimum solutions. This paper proposes a novel people identity attributes-based heuristic technology, named the People Identity Attributes-based Information-learning Search Optimization (ISO), inspired by people’s psychological assessment and learning behaviors for information resources based on the social status-based identity attribute and the self-survival demands-based identity attribute. For the former, a four-level information delivery mechanism is constructed through leader, manager, executor, and freelancer, emphasizing global optimization. For the latter, the staged transforming model based on random accumulation and directed induction behaviors are constructed according to self-survival demands, emphasizing global optimization and exploration. The dual identity attributes-based search strategy emphasizes psychological assessment and selection for the information loss, including the learning behavior for two kinds of information resources with different identity attributes, and the recovering behavior for the information loss by constructing the information resilience equation, which emphasizes local optimization and exploitation. This paper qualitatively analyzes the swarm behavior, search history, and the exploration and exploitation capabilities of ISO. The optimization performances are quantitatively analyzed for ISO and 9 competitive algorithms on 39 benchmark tests, including the convergence, solution accuracy, robustness, sensitivity, significance, statistical investigation-based Wilcoxon test and Friedman test. The scalability of ISO is investigated on CEC2017 (30Dim, 50Dim, 100Dim) and the latest CEC2022 (10Dim, 20Dim) suites. The results reveal that compared to other competitive algorithms, ISO possesses best computing performance with ranking the first in all competitors. In addition, the proposed ISO and 12 competitors consider 10 constraint engineering optimization problems and the real application of path planning with multiple obstacles, suggesting that ISO possesses significant optimization performance.