Food-chain Algorithm and Comparison of Its Performance with Real-coded GA

The characteristics of artificial life are emergence and dynamic interaction with the environment, and food-chain phenomenon appears to be an important and widespread phenomenon in the living system. According to those ideas above, the local action rules of artificial life are defined, and a novel artificial-life algorithm named food-chain algorithm is proposed. Food-chain algorithm achieves optimization computation by mimicking the evolution of natural ecosystem and the information processing mechanism of natural organisms. In the article, the definition, ideology, and flow of food-chain algorithm and the energy rules of artificial-life metabolism and the transformation rules of movement range of artificial-life individuals are discussed. Compared with real-coded genetic algorithm by standard functions, food-chain algorithm is more predominant in function optimization. Furthermore, food-chain algorithm has lifelike traits, for example, autonomy, evolution, and self-adaptive, and it is fit to deal with the optimization problems of lifelike systems.