The object migration automata: its field, scope, applications, and future research challenges

Partitioning, in and of itself, is an NP-hard problem. Prior to the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions, it was solved in the 1970s by optimization-based strategies. However, AI-based solutions appeared in the 1980s in a pioneering way, by using a Learning Automaton (LA)-motivated strategy known as the so-called Object Migrating Automaton (OMA). Although the OMA and its derivatives have been used in numerous applications since then, the basic kernel has remained the same. Because the number of possible partitions in a partitioning problem can be combinatorially exponential and the underlying tasks are NP-hard, the most advanced OMA algorithms could, until recently, only solve issues involving equally sized groups. Due to our recent innovations cited in the body of this paper, the enhanced OMA now also handles non-equally sized groups. Earlier, we had presented in Omslandseter (Pattern Anal Appl, 2023), a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art enhancements of the best-known OMA. We believe that these results will be the benchmark for a few decades and that it will be very hard to beat these results. This is a companion paper, intended to augment the contents of Omslandseter (Pattern Anal Appl, 2023). In this paper, we first discuss the OMA’s prior applications, its historical and current innovations, and the OMA-based algorithms’ relevance to societal needs. We also provide well-specified guidelines for future researchers so that they can use them for unresolved tasks, and also develop further advancements.