Mohammad H. Almomani, Saleh Ali Alomari, Raed Abu Zitar, Mirjalol Ismoilov, Aseel Smerat, Widi Aribowo, Zeinab Montazeri, Mohammad Dehghani, Om Parkash Malik, Kei Eguchi
In this paper, a novel metaheuristic algorithm, Restaurant Competition Optimization (RCO), is introduced, inspired by restaurants' competitive behavior to achieve a higher score than a food tester or critic. The main motivation of this research is to use a simple, intuitive, yet effective human behavior model to achieve an efficient balance between global search and local improvement in complex optimization problems. In RCO, each restaurant is modeled as a search agent, and the tester's scoring and ranking process is directly mapped to the objective function, so that competition, emulation of successful restaurants, and controlled innovations form the core of the search mechanism. The algorithm structure includes two complementary phases of exploration and exploitation, which cover, respectively, large changes and large movements in the solution space, as well as careful and gradual refinements around the best solutions. All human behaviors in the competition between restaurants are mapped to mathematical relationships in a reasonable, transparent manner, and there is no need to adjust complex external parameters. In order to evaluate the efficiency of RCO, this algorithm is implemented on four well-known engineering design problems from real-world applications, including the design of tension/compression springs, welded beams, speed reducers, and pressure vessels, and its performance is compared with nine well-known metaheuristic algorithms. Results from several independent runs show that RCO consistently provides more optimal values, less dispersion, and greater stability than competing algorithms. These findings indicate RCO's strong capability for solving nonlinear and constrained engineering optimization problems and its high potential for widespread application in real-world settings. © This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. License details: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, The Hashemite University, P.O box 330127, Zarqa, 13133, Jordan; Computer Science Department, Faculty of Information Technology, Jadara University, Irbid, 21110, Jordan; College of Engineering and Computing, Liwa University, Abu Dhabi, 41009, United Arab Emirates; Department of Transport Systems, Urgench State University named after Abu Rayhan Biruni, 14, Kh. Alimdjan str, Urgench city, Urgench, 220100, Uzbekistan; Hourani Center for Applied Scientific Research, Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Amman, 19328, Jordan; Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Vocational Studies, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz, 7155713876, Iran; Department of Electrical and Software Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, T2N 1N4, AB, Canada; Department of Information Electronics, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan
