Development of Ant Lion Optimizer toolkit in LabVIEW™

Abstract

Metaheuristic or nature inspired optimization have evolved over time towards development of a general purpose optimizer. In this paper, a novel nature inspired algorithm, based on hunting mechanism of antlions, Ant Lion Optimizer toolkit is developed in LabVIEWTM environment. This paper provides an orderly procedure for development of toolkit including random walk of ants, building of traps, catching of prey and finally rebuilding of traps. LabVIEWTM is a highly productive development environment used largely in measurement and control applications. The only standard optimizer toolkit available in LabVIEW™ is Differential Evolution (DE) and therefore a need was felt to have an efficient optimizer. The toolkit so evolved in this paper when tested on different benchmark functions has performed adequately well over the DE toolkit. The results so obtained clearly prove that the submitted toolkit is able to provide superior results in terms of improved exploration, local optima avoidance, exploitation, and convergence.