Red-Crowned Crane Optimization: A Novel Biomimetic Metaheuristic Algorithm for Engineering Applications

This paper proposes a novel bio-inspired metaheuristic algorithm called the Red-crowned Crane Optimization (RCO) algorithm. This algorithm is developed by mathematically modeling four habits of red-crowned cranes: dispersing for foraging, gathering for roosting, dancing, and escaping from danger. The foraging strategy is used to search unknown areas to ensure the exploration ability, and the roosting behavior prompts cranes to approach better positions, thereby enhancing the exploitation performance. The crane dancing strategy further balances the local and global search capabilities of the algorithm. Additionally, the introduction of the escaping mechanism effectively reduces the possibility of the algorithm falling into local optima. The RCO algorithm is compared with eight popular optimization algorithms on a large number of benchmark functions. The results show that the RCO algorithm can find better solutions for 74% of the CEC-2005 test functions and 50% of the CEC-2022 test functions. This algorithm has a fast convergence speed and high search accuracy on most functions, and it can handle high-dimensional problems. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results demonstrate the significant superiority of the RCO algorithm over other algorithms. In addition, applications to eight practical engineering problems further demonstrate its ability to find near-optimal solutions.