African Bison Optimization Algorithm:A New Bio-Inspired Optimizer with Engineering Applications

This paper introduces the African Bison Optimization(ABO)algorithm,which is based on biological population.ABO is inspired by the survival behaviors of the African bison,including foraging,bathing,jousting,mating,and eliminating.The foraging behavior prompts the bison to seek a richer food source for survival.When bison find a food source,they stick around for a while by bathing behavior.The jousting behavior makes bison stand out in the population,then the winner gets the chance to produce offspring in the mating behavior.The eliminating behavior causes the old or injured bison to be weeded out from the herd,thus maintaining the excellent individuals.The above behaviors are translated into ABO by mathematical modeling.To assess the reliability and performance of ABO,it is evaluated on a diverse set of 23 benchmark functions and applied to solve five practical engineering problems with constraints.The findings from the simulation demonstrate that ABO exhibits superior and more competitive performance by effectively managing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation when compared with the other nine popular metaheuristics algorithms.

Multi-Objective Optimization of Multi-Product Parallel Disassembly Line Balancing Problem Considering Multi-Skilled Workers Using a Discrete Chemical Reaction Optimization Algorithm

This work investigates a multi-product parallel disassembly line balancing problem considering multi-skilled workers.A mathematical model for the parallel disassembly line is established to achieve maximized disassembly profit and minimized workstation cycle time.Based on a product’s AND/OR graph,matrices for task-skill,worker-skill,precedence relationships,and disassembly correlations are developed.A multi-objective discrete chemical reaction optimization algorithm is designed.To enhance solution diversity,improvements are made to four reactions:decomposition,synthesis,intermolecular ineffective collision,and wall invalid collision reaction,completing the evolution of molecular individuals.The established model and improved algorithm are applied to ball pen,flashlight,washing machine,and radio combinations,respectively.Introducing a Collaborative Resource Allocation(CRA)strategy based on a Decomposition-Based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm,the experimental results are compared with four classical algorithms:MOEA/D,MOEAD-CRA,Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm Ⅱ(NSGA-Ⅱ),and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm Ⅲ(NSGA-Ⅲ).This validates the feasibility and superiority of the proposed algorithm in parallel disassembly production lines.

Modified Cuckoo Search Algorithm to Solve Economic Power Dispatch Optimization Problems

A modified cuckoo search(CS) algorithm is proposed to solve economic dispatch(ED) problems that have nonconvex, non-continuous or non-linear solution spaces considering valve-point effects, prohibited operating zones, transmission losses and ramp rate limits. Comparing with the traditional cuckoo search algorithm, we propose a self-adaptive step size and some neighbor-study strategies to enhance search performance.Moreover, an improved lambda iteration strategy is used to generate new solutions. To show the superiority of the proposed algorithm over several classic algorithms, four systems with different benchmarks are tested. The results show its efficiency to solve economic dispatch problems, especially for large-scale systems.

MU-GAN:Facial Attribute Editing Based on Multi-Attention Mechanism

Facial attribute editing has mainly two objectives:1)translating image from a source domain to a target one,and 2)only changing the facial regions related to a target attribute and preserving the attribute-excluding details.In this work,we propose a multi-attention U-Net-based generative adversarial network(MU-GAN).First,we replace a classic convolutional encoder-decoder with a symmetric U-Net-like structure in a generator,and then apply an additive attention mechanism to build attention-based U-Net connections for adaptively transferring encoder representations to complement a decoder with attribute-excluding detail and enhance attribute editing ability.Second,a self-attention(SA)mechanism is incorporated into convolutional layers for modeling long-range and multi-level dependencies across image regions.Experimental results indicate that our method is capable of balancing attribute editing ability and details preservation ability,and can decouple the correlation among attributes.It outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of attribute manipulation accuracy and image quality.Our code is available at https://github.com/SuSir1996/MU-GAN.

Disassembly Sequence Planning:A Survey

It is well-recognized that obsolete or discarded products can cause serious environmental pollution if they are poorly be handled.They contain reusable resource that can be recycled and used to generate desired economic benefits.Therefore,performing their efficient disassembly is highly important in green manufacturing and sustainable economic development.Their typical examples are electronic appliances and electromechanical/mechanical products.This paper presents a survey on the state of the art of disassembly sequence planning.It can help new researchers or decision makers to search for the right solution for optimal disassembly planning.It reviews the disassembly theory and methods that are applied for the processing,repair,and maintenance of obsolete/discarded products.This paper discusses the recent progress of disassembly sequencing planning in four major aspects:product disassembly modeling methods,mathematical programming methods,artificial intelligence methods,and uncertainty handling.This survey should stimulate readers to be engaged in the research,development and applications of disassembly and remanufacturing methodologies in the Industry 4.0 era.