A novel Orca Cultural Algorithm and applications

In this article, the paradigm of machine culture as an extension to machine intelligence is introduced. This new concept is modelled based on animal intelligence and culture. The example of orca intelligence and culture is considered as orcas possess in addition to skills allowing them to reach preys, the ability to transmit their culture from generation to generation. The orca intelligence is studied and then simulated to design an algorithm called Orca Algorithm (OA). OA consists in modelling the orca lifestyle and in particular the orcas social organization, echolocation behaviour and hunting techniques. In order to integrate the cultural dimension, OA was hybridized with the Cultural Algorithm (CA) to get an algorithm called Orca Cultural Algorithm (OCA). OCA was tested on 22 benchmark problems of the literature to evaluate its performance. Extensive experiments were first performed to set the algorithm parameters prior to measure its effectiveness and efficiency. In a second stage, OCA was adapted to discrete problems and applied to the maze game with four level of complexity. Additional experiments were held to compare the designed algorithm with recent state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms. The overall obtained results are very promising.