Bacterial Foraging Optimization

Abstract

The bacterial foraging optimization (BFO) algorithm mimics how bacteria forage over a landscape of nutrients to perform parallel nongradient optimization. In this article, the author provides a tutorial on BFO, including an overview of the biology of bacterial foraging and the pseudo-code that models this process. The algorithms features are briefly compared to those in genetic algorithms, other bio-inspired methods, and nongradient optimization. The applications and future directions of BFO are also presented.