Chaotic methods applied to the marriage in honey bees optimization metaheuristic

Chaos is a nonlinear deterministic phenomenon sensitive to initial conditions, capable of going through different states over a certain range without repetition. The aim of the present paper is to use this characteristic, applying chaotic methods to the Marriage in honey Bees Optimization (MBO) metaheuristic with the purpose of exploring the existence of improvements in the solutions found. This type of metaheuristic bioinspired in bees has been shown to be efficient for solving a wide range of problems, where queen bees, drones, larvae, and workers interact to find good solutions to different problems. Chaotic methods were introduced into two MBO processes, namely the generation of initial queens and drones, and then the generation of workers. The experiment was carried out with an optimization problem that presents a great difficulty for its solution, like the traveling salesman problem. The results obtained with traditional MBO and MBO with chaos show that the latter achieves a significant 25% improvement of the set of instances approached.