LFA: A Lévy Walk and Firefly-Based Search Algorithm: Application to Multi-Target Search and Multi-Robot Foraging

In the literature, several exploration algorithms have been proposed so far. Among these, Lévy walk is commonly used since it is proved to be more efficient than the simple random-walk exploration. It is beneficial when targets are sparsely distributed in the search space. However, due to its super-diffusive behavior, some tuning is needed to improve its performance, specifically when targets are clustered. Firefly algorithm is a swarm intelligence-based algorithm useful for intensive search, but its exploration rate is very limited. An efficient and reliable search could be attained by combining the two algorithms since the first one allows exploration space, and the second one encourages its exploitation. In this paper, we propose a swarm intelligence-based search algorithm called Lévy walk and Firefly-based Algorithm (LFA), which is a hybridization of the two aforementioned algorithms. The algorithm is applied to Multi-Target Search and Multi-Robot Foraging. Numerical experiments to test the performances are conducted on the robotic simulator ARGoS. A comparison with the original firefly algorithm proves the goodness of our contribution.