An Enhanced NSGA-II Algorithm Combining Lévy Flight and Simulated Annealing and Its Application in Electric Winch Trajectory Planning: A Complex Multi-Objective Optimization Study

To overcome the limitations of traditional multi-objective evolutionary algorithms—which often become trapped in local optima when addressing complex optimization problems and face challenges in balancing convergence efficiency with population diversity—this study proposes an enhanced NSGA-II algorithm that incorporates Lévy flight and simulated annealing strategies. The proposed algorithm enhances global exploration via Lévy flight mutation, improves local search precision through simulated annealing, and dynamically coordinates the search process using adaptive parameter strategies. Experiments conducted on the ZDT and DTLZ test function series demonstrated that the proposed algorithm achieves performance comparable to or better than that of NSGA-II and other benchmark algorithms, as measured by inverted generational distance and hypervolume metrics. It also exhibited superior convergence, distribution uniformity, and robustness. Furthermore, the algorithm was applied to the multi-objective optimization of electric winch trajectories for oil drilling rigs, which employed trajectory planning based on quintic polynomials. The simulation results demonstrated, compared to the pre-optimization baseline data, reductions of 6% in total operation time, 17.99% in energy consumption, and 27.4% in impact severity, thereby validating the method’s effectiveness and applicability in practical engineering scenarios. The comprehensive results demonstrate that the improved algorithm exhibits robust performance and excellent adaptability when addressing complex multi-objective optimization problems.