Abraham Ajith - Cohort Intelligence: A Socio-inspired Optimization Method

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

Anand Jayant Kulkarni 1, 2, Ganesh Krishnasamy 3 and Ajith Abraham 4

For almost all the human activities there is a desire to deliver the most with the least. For example in the business point of view maximum profit is desired from least investment; maximum number of crop yield is desired with minimum investment on fertilizers; maximizing the strength, longevity, efficiency, utilization with minimum initial investment and operational cost of various household as well as industrial equipments and machineries. To set a record in a race, for example, the aim is to do the fastest (shortest time).

The concept of optimization has great significance in both human affairs and the laws of nature which is the inherent characteristic to achieve the best or most favorable (minimum or maximum) from a given situation []. In addition, as the element of design is present in all fields of human activity, all aspects of optimization can be viewed and studied as design optimization without any loss of generality. This makes it clear that the study of design optimization can help not only in the human activity of creating optimum design of products, processes and systems, but also in the understanding and analysis of mathematical/physical phenomenon and in the solution of mathematical problems. The constraints are inherent part if the real world problems and they have to be satisfied to ensure the acceptability of the solution. There are always numerous requirements and constraints imposed on the designs of components, products, processes or systems in real-life engineering practice, just as in all other fields of design activity. Therefore, creating a feasible design under all these diverse requirements/constraints is already a difficult task, and to ensure that the feasible design created is also the best is even more difficult.