20.500.12556/DKUM-99212 Measuring successful, failed and deceptive exploration of evolutionary algorithms based on attraction basins This paper introduces a novel direct measure of exploration and exploitation in Evolutionary Algorithms, based on attraction basins—regions of the search space with an attractor toward which neighboring solutions tend to evolve. Each solution can be associated with a particular attraction basin. If a new solution belongs to the same attraction basin as its parent, then the search process is identified as exploitation; otherwise, it is identified as exploration. Four different exploration type definitions were used: successful, failed, deceptive, and successful rejection. These are measured directly at the individual level (without precomputing basins) on six single-objective continuous benchmark problems and a real-world problem using DE/rand/1/bin, JADE, LSHADE, ABC, and TLBO. The results revealed that EAs differentiate themselves in how they handle different types of exploration. The approach outperformed prior basin-based measures in efficiency, and exposed the limitations of diversity-based methods, enabling explicit quantification and control of the balance between exploration and exploitation. evolutionary algorithm exploration and exploitation attraction basin successful failed deceptive exploration successful rejection evolucijski algoritmi eksporacija eksploitacija true false true Elsevier B.V. Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/applied-soft-computing © 2026 The Author(s) Članek v reviji 2026-08-07 11:05:51 2026-08-07 11:05:51 2026-08-08 03:08:39 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 41 str. part A, [article no.] 115973 Vol. 203 Nov. 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 2025-06-10 2026-07-13 2026-07-15 004.4 287232771 10.1016/j.asoc.2026.115973 1872-9681 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568494626014213?via%3Dihub 1 30a35a0b-923f-11f1-a6bf-00155d0001be https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=209045 1-s2.0-S1568494626014213-main.pdf 1-s2.0-S1568494626014213-main.pdf 1 BCAC3E9A7E9FCB4040B30F0F9E639093 68cf61e49fbde76e4ff464c464d63979e9b1463860e8a6e5ed89f4ef798a1656 a42f732e-923f-11f1-a6bf-00155d0001be https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=209047 Fakulteta za elektrotehniko, računalništvo in informatiko 0 0 0