Improved seagull optimization algorithm using Lévy flight and mutation operator for feature selection

Seagull optimization algorithm (SOA) is a recent bio-inspired technique utilized to improve the constrained large-scale problems in low computational cost and quick convergence speed. However, the globally optimized search space for the SOA is linear, which means that the SOA’s global search capability could not be fully utilized. Thus, we propose an improved SOA algorithm (ISOA) using Lévy flight and mutation operators. The ISOA obtains some Lévy flight features, which improves the original SOA by performing large jumps, making the search escape from the local optima and begin at a different search space region. The mutation operator, which improves the exploration–exploitation trade-off, allows the catch of the optimal solution quickly and accurately. In order to examine the performance of the proposed ISOA approach, three experiments were conducted. The first one evaluates the ISOA in solving the …