Introduction of ABCEP as an automatic programming method

Automatic programming is a branch of artificial intelligence that presents each solution as a mathematical formula based on heuristic mechanisms. In this study, artificial bee colony expression programming (ABCEP) is presented, which is combined simultaneously with expression programming. By using expression sharing to generate new solutions, the proposed method can minimize certain deficiencies of artificial bee colony programming, such as weak convergence and high locality. A total number of 15 real-world regression benchmark functions was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. For comparison purposes, successful run percentage, mean best cost, convergence performance, and run time of ABCEP were compared to those of other tested automatic programming algorithms, including artificial bee colony programming, gene expression programming, genetic programming, and quick artificial bee colony programming. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test was also done to compare the behavior of the algorithms. Additionally, the accuracy of all algorithms was then evaluated using three real-world practical benchmarks. The results indicate that the predictions generated by ABCEP are better than those obtained by other control algorithms based on successful runs, mean fitness values, and convergence rate.