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Top1. Introduction
Nature has been a great source of inspiration for solving difficult and complex problems for decades. It has inspired many heuristic algorithms to solve hard problems in a reasonable time (Yang, 2008). Some of the famous and well-known Nature-inspired Algorithms are: Genetic Algorithms (Leardi, 2009; Bouyer, 2010), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) (Kennedy, 1995; Hatamlou 2013, 2017), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) (Dorigo, 2005), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) (Karaboga, 2007; Mohrechi, 2015), Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) (Rashedi, 2009; Hatamlou, 2011, 2012, 2013), Big Bang-Big Crunch Algorithm (BB-BC) (Hatamlou, 2011, 2013), Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) (Mirjalili, 2014), Black Hole Algorithm (BH) (Hatamlou, 2013, 2017; Farahmandian, 2015), and Heart Algorithm (Hatamlou, 2014, 2016). Nature-inspired algorithm has been applied to a broad range of applications and problems, like Timetabling, Clustering, Routing, Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), Knapsack Problem, Graph Coloring, Vehicle Routing etc.
Nature-inspired algorithms usually start with an initial population of candidate solutions for the optimization problem and then cooperate with each other to find the optimal solution for that problem. In these algorithms the candidate solutions move in the problem space via some mechanism and search for optimal solutions by visiting different areas. Most of Nature-inspired algorithms try to make balance between intensification and diversification mechanism. The diversification means searching whole problem space as much as possible, while intensification ensures the algorithm to search promising areas by restricting the search space around the current best solutions.
Heart algorithm is one of the most recent Nature-inspired algorithms. It mimics the heart action and circulatory system procedure in the human beings for searching the problem space. Heart algorithm is a robust and reliable approach which has a simple structure.