Moth-flame optimization for training Multi-Layer Perceptrons

Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) is one of the Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNNs) types. Searching for weights and biases in MLP is important to achieve minimum training error. In this paper, Moth-Flame Optimizer (MFO) is used to train Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP). MFO-MLP is used to search for the weights and biases of the MLP to achieve minimum error and high classification rate. Five standard classification datasets are utilized to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Moreover, three function-approximation datasets are used to test the performance of the proposed method. The proposed method (i.e. MFO-MLP) is compared with four well-known optimization algorithms, namely, Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Evolution Strategy (ES). The experimental results prove that the MFO algorithm is very competitive, solves the local optima problem, and it achieves a high accuracy.