An adaptive position-guided gravitational search algorithm for function optimization and image threshold segmentation

Gravitational search algorithm is a population-based optimization method. To address its low search performance and premature convergence, a novel variant called adaptive position-guided gravitational search algorithm is proposed. It utilizes the best, worst and other particles’ position information to adaptively determine the Kbest particles which provide a good movement direction. The gravitational force is reinforced by Kbest particles and new constructed Dbest particles to improve the exploration and exploitation abilities. Various particles’ position information jointly provide the effective search guideline and accelerate the convergence rate. Validations are conducted to firstly discuss the parameters and strategies of the proposed algorithm. Then, compared with several state-of-the-art gravitational search algorithm variants on CEC2017 benchmark functions, the proposed algorithm proves its superiority. Finally, the proposed algorithm exhibits the good segmentation effect on image threshold segmentation problems.