Abstract: The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is an evolutionary optimization algorithm based on swarm intelligence and inspired by the honey bees’ food search behavior. Since the ABC algorithm has been developed to achieve optimal solutions by searching in the continuous search space, modification is required to apply it to binary optimization problems. In this study, we modify the ABC algorithm to solve binary optimization problems and name it the improved binary ABC (IbinABC). The proposed method consists of an update mechanism based on fitness values and the selection of different decision variables. Therefore, we aim to prevent the ABC algorithm from getting stuck in a local minimum by increasing its exploration ability. We compare the IbinABC algorithm with three variants of the ABC and other meta-heuristic algorithms in the literature. For comparison, we use the well-known OR-Library dataset containing 15 problem instances prepared for the uncapacitated facility location problem. Computational results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the others in terms of convergence speed and robustness. The source code of the algorithm is available at https://github.com/rafetdurgut/ibinABC.

Key words: Artificial bee colony, Binary optimization, Uncapacitated facility location problem (UFLP)

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