Improved binary pigeon-inspired optimization and its application for feature selection

The Pigeon-Inspired Optimization (PIO) algorithm is an intelligent algorithm inspired by the behavior of pigeons returned to the nest. The binary pigeon-inspired optimization (BPIO) algorithm is a binary version of the PIO algorithm, it can be used to optimize binary application problems. The transfer function plays a very important part in the BPIO algorithm. To improve the solution quality of the BPIO algorithm, this paper proposes four new transfer function, an improved speed update scheme, and a second-stage position update method. The original BPIO algorithm is easier to fall into the local optimal, so a new speed update equation is proposed. In the simulation experiment, the improved BPIO is compared with binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) and binary grey wolf optimizer (BGWO). In addition, the benchmark test function, statistical analysis, Friedman’s test and Wilcoxon rank-sum test are used to prove that the improved algorithm is quite effective, and it also verifies how to set the speed of dynamic movement. Finally, feature selection was successfully implemented in the UCI data set, and higher classification results were obtained with fewer feature numbers.