A multi-agent reinforcement learning driven artificial bee colony algorithm with the central controller

The large-scale real value problem in continuous and discrete optimization problems is a challenging issue for researchers and practitioners in the manufacturing domain. An improved artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) combined with multi-agent reinforcement learning (called MARLABC) is presented for addressing the large-scale real value optimization problem in this study. Two stages including the training and the testing are introduced in the MARLABC via the multi-agent central controller to improve the convergence speed and local exploitation capability of the algorithm. The optimal strategy pool is constructed by training procedures via the multi-agent central controller with Q-learning mechanism. The effective strategy is selected from the optimal strategy pool for each agent during the testing process in the multi-agent central controller. The elite agents in the training population are reserved to generate the testing population to guide the search. The MARLABC algorithm is compared with the ABC variants and state-of-art algorithms on CEC 2017 benchmark problems. The stability and effectiveness of the MARLABC algorithm are confirmed by the experimental results.