Bayesian Optimization Approaches for Massively Multi-modal Problems

The optimization of massively multi-modal functions is a challenging task, particularly for problems where the search space can lead the optimization process to local optima. While evolutionary algorithms have been extensively investigated for these optimization problems, Bayesian Optimization algorithms have not been explored to the same extent. In this paper, we study the behavior of Bayesian Optimization as part of a hybrid approach for solving several massively multi-modal functions. We use well-known benchmarks and metrics to evaluate how different variants of Bayesian Optimization deal with multi-modality.