The firefly algorithm (FA), which is usually used in optimization problems, is a stochastic, population-based algorithm inspired by the intelligent, collective behavior of fireflies in nature. In the standard FA, each firefly in each neighborhood is compared with other fireflies, and the less-bright firefly moves toward the brighter one (in the maximization optimization). In fact, in the standa...

This paper describes an embedded computing and sensing system developed to serve the needs of the Autonomous Unmanned Systems Stream (AUSS), a two-semester sequence at the University of Maryland that provides first-year students with an inquiry-based introduction to concepts in engineering and autonomy. AUSS is part of the UMD First-year Innovation and Research Experience program (FIRE), a camp...

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a major and very interesting technology, which consists of small battery powered sensor nodes with limited power resources. The sensor nodes are inaccessible to the user once they are deployed. Replacing the battery is not possible every time. Hence in order to improve the lifetime of the network, energy efficiency of the network needs to be maximized by decreas...

In recent years, various heuristic optimization methods have been developed. Many of these methods are inspired by swarm behaviors in nature, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), firefly algorithm (FA) and cuckoo optimization algorithm (COA). Recently introduced COA, has proven its excellent capabilities, such as faster convergence and better global minimum achievement. In this paper a ne...

might allow sister-sister discrimination. The locations of the cues used in discrimination are not known. Egg-stage switches indicated that eggs or the comb, or their combination, are adequate for discrimination of a sister's comb from a nonsister's. For several reasons (7) we suspect that discrimination cues reside in the comb, not in brood members themselves, and are odors applied by the foun...

With the sharp increase in heterogeneity and distribution of elements in wide-area networks, more flexible, efficient and autonomous approaches for management and information distribution are needed. This paper proposes a novel approach, based on gossip protocols and firefly synchronisation theory, for the management policy distribution and synchronisation over a number of nodes in an Applicati...

In software project management there are several problems to deal, one of those is the Software Project Scheduling Problem (SPSP). This problem requires to assign a set of resources to tasks for a given project, trying to decrease the duration and cost of the whole project. The workers and their skills are the main resources in the project. In this paper we present the SPSP as a combinatorial o...

Global optimization is challenging to solve due to its nonlinearity and multimodality. Traditional algorithms such as the gradient-based methods often struggle to deal with such problems and one of the current trends is to use metaheuristic algorithms. In this paper, a novel hybrid population-based global optimization algorithm, called hybrid firefly algorithm (HFA), is proposed by combining th...

With the potential growth of multimedia hardware and applications, the machines have to realize the information by adapting to the internal information. An adaptive content based image retrieval (CBIR) approach based on relevance feedback and Firefly algorithm is proposed in this paper. In addition to the color descriptor, wavelet-based texture descriptor is considered to improve the retrieval ...