Color difference classification of solid color printing and dyeing products based on optimization of the extreme learning machine of the improved whale optimization algorithm

To mitigate the problem of low classification accuracy in solid color printing and dyeing, a color difference classification model based on the differential evolution (DE) improved whale optimization algorithm (WOA) for extreme learning machine (ELM) optimization, named the DE-WOA-ELM, was developed in this study. Considering that the initial population of the WOA has a significant influence on the solution speed and quality, DE was used to generate a more suitable initial population for the WOA by avoiding local optima, thereby improving the performance. The method used an excellent global search ability to improve the WOA for optimization and obtained an optimal parameter combination for the ELM. Thus, the problem of randomly initializing the input weight and the hidden layer bias of the ELM, which leads to a nonuniform training model and unstable algorithm, was solved. Finally, by optimizing the input weight and hidden layer bias, the color difference classification model of the ELM with a strong generalization ability was constructed. The results of the color difference classification experiments on fabric images collected under standard light sources show that the average classification accuracy for the dataset is increased by 2.15%, 11.06%, 12.11%, and 0.47% compared with those of the ELM, support vector machine, back propagation neural network, and kernel ELM, respectively.