Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm with Crossover Operators for Feature Selection and Solving Engineering Problems

Feature selection (FS) is an irreplaceable phase that makes data mining more efficient. It effectively enhances the implementation and decreases the computational problem of learning models. The comprehensive and greedy algorithms are not suitable for the present growing number of features when detecting the optimal subset. Thus, swarm intelligence algorithms (SI) are becoming more common in dealing with FS problems. The grasshopper optimizer algorithm (GOA) represents a new SI; it showed good performance in different fields. Another promising nature-inspired algorithm is a salp swarm algorithm, denoted as SSA, an SI used to tackle optimization issues. In this paper, two phases are applied to propose a new method using crossover-salp swarm with grasshopper optimization algorithm (cSG). In this method, the crossover operators are used to maintain the population of the SSA then the improved SSA is used as a local search to boost the exploration phase of the GOA. Subsequently, this improvement prevents the cSG from premature convergence, high computation time, and being trapped in local minimum. To confirm the effectiveness of proposed cSG method, it is evaluated in different optimizations problems. Eventually, the obtained results are compared to a number of well-known algorithms over global optimization, feature selection datasets, and six real-engineering problems. Experimental results point out that the cSG is superior in solving different optimization problems due to the integration of crossover operators and SSA which enhances its performance and flexibility.