Hybridizing differential evolution and novelty search for multimodal optimization problems

Multimodal optimization has shown to be a complex paradigm underneath real-world problems arising in many practical applications, with particular prevalence in physics-related domains. Among them, a plethora of cases within the computational design of aerospace structures can be modeled as a multimodal optimization problem, such as aerodynamic optimization or airfoils and wings. This work aims at presenting a new research direction towards efficiently tackling this kind of optimization problems, which pursues the discovery of the multiple (at least locally optimal) solutions of a given optimization problem. Specifically, we propose to exploit the concept behind the so-called Novelty Search mechanism and embed it into the self-adaptive Differential Evolution algorithm so as to gain an increased level of controlled diversity during the search process. We assess the performance of the proposed solver over the well-known CEC'2013 suite of multimodal test functions. The obtained outcomes of the designed experimentation supports our claim that Novelty Search is a promising approach for heuristically addressed multimodal problems.