Meta-Heuristic Optimizer Inspired by the Philosophy of Yi Jing

Abstract Drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Yi Jing, the Yin-Yang pair optimization (YYPO) algorithm has been shown to achieve competitive performance in single objective optimizations, in addition to the advantage of low time complexity when compared to other population-based meta-heuristics. Building upon Yi Jing, we propose the novel Yi optimization (YI) algorithm. Specifically, we enhance the Yin-Yang pair in YYPO with a proposed Yi-point, in which we use Cauchy flight to update the solution, by implementing both the harmony and reversal concept of Yi Jing. The proposed Yi-point balances both the effort of exploration and exploitation in the optimization process. To examine YI, we use the IEEE CEC 2017 benchmarks and compare YI against the dynamical YYPO, CV1.0 optimizer, and four classical optimizers, i.e., the differential evolution, the genetic algorithm, the particle swarm optimization, and the simulated annealing. According to the experimental results, YI shows highly competitive performance while keeping the low time complexity. The results of this work have implications for enhancing a meta-heuristic optimizer using the philosophy of Yi Jing.