  We propose a swarm-based optimization algorithm inspired by air currents of a
tornado. Two main air currents - spiral and updraft - are mimicked. Spiral
motion is designed for exploration of new search areas and updraft movements is
deployed for exploitation of a promising candidate solution. Assignment of just
one search direction to each particle at each iteration, leads to low
computational complexity of the proposed algorithm respect to the conventional
algorithms. Regardless of the step size parameters, the only parameter of the
proposed algorithm, called tornado diameter, can be efficiently adjusted by
randomization. Numerical results over six different benchmark cost functions
indicate comparable and, in some cases, better performance of the proposed
algorithm respect to some other metaheuristics.
