Projectile-target search algorithm: a stochastic metaheuristic optimization technique

This paper proposes a new stochastic metaheuristic optimization algorithm which is based on kinematics of projectile motion and called projectile-target search (PTS) algorithm. The PTS algorithm employs the envelope of projectile trajectory to find the target in the search space. It has 2 types of control parameters. The first type is set to give the possibility of the algorithm to accelerate convergence process, while the other type is set to enhance the possibility to generate new better projectiles for searching process. However, both are responsible to find better fitness values in the search space. In order to perform its capability to deal with global optimum problems, the PTS algorithm is evaluated on six well-known benchmarks and their shifted functions with 100 dimensions. Optimization results have demonstrated that the PTS algoritm offers very good performances and it is very competitive compared to other metaheuristic algorithms