A Firefly Algorithm for Mixed-Variable Optimization Based on Hybrid Distance Modeling

ArXi:2603.26792v1 Announce Type: cross Several real-world optimization problems involve mixed-variable search spaces, where continuous, ordinal, and categorical decision variables coexist. However, most population-based metaheuristic algorithms are designed for either continuous or discrete optimization problems and do not naturally handle heterogeneous variable types. In this paper, we propose an adaptation of the Firefly Algorithm for mixed-variable optimization problems (FAm