[PD-announce] First release of Particle Swarm Optimizer object (PSO)

[ben at ekran.org]

Hello all,

I just finished the PSO object and put it in CVS. You can also download
the source at: www.ekran.org/ben/research/pso

A PSO is an evolutionary algorithm similar to a genetic algorithm. Quoted
from: "Hybird Particle Swarm Optimizer with Mass Extinction" by Xiao-Feng
Xie, Wen-Jun Zhang, Zhi-Lian Yang:

"The fundament to the development of PSO is a hypothesis that social
sharing of information among conspeciates offers an evolutionary
advantage. PSO is similar to the other evolutionary algorithms in that the
system is initialized with a population of random solutions. However, each
potential solution is also assigned a randomized velocity, and the
potential solutions, call particles, corresponding to individuals. Each
particle in PSO flies in the D-dimensional problem space with a velocity
which is dynamically adjusted according to the flying experiences of its
own and its colleagues."

The implimentation is very general and can be scaled to many different uses.
The PSO minimizes around an n-dimentional target specified by the user.
I've been experimenting with very high-dimentional systems (64, 128 +) so
that an image can be represented by each particle.

I've only included makefiles for linux and OSX (borrowed from prepend and
pool) and I plan on releasing MAX OSX and PD OSX binaries. If you're
inclined to compile for win32 please contact me!

Let me know if you find it useful/interesting and what you do with it!

Ben