Red deer algorithm (RDA): a new nature-inspired meta-heuristic

Nature has been considered as an inspiration of several recent meta-heuristic algorithms. This paper firstly studies and mimics the behavior of Scottish red deer in order to develop a new nature-inspired algorithm. The main inspiration of this meta-heuristic algorithm is to originate from an unusual mating behavior of Scottish red deer in a breading season. Similar to other population-based meta-heuristics, the red deer algorithm (RDA) starts with an initial population called red deers (RDs). They are divided into two types: hinds and male RDs. Besides, a harem is a group of female RDs. The general steps of this evolutionary algorithm are considered by the competition of male RDs to get the harem with more hinds via roaring and fighting behaviors. By solving 12 benchmark functions and important engineering as well as multi-objective optimization problems, the superiority of the proposed RDA shows in comparison with other well-known and recent meta-heuristics. [GRAPHICS]