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Selecting evolutionary operators using reinforcement learning: initial explorations

Published: 12 July 2014 Publication History

Abstract

In evolutionary optimization, it is important to use efficient evolutionary operators, such as mutation and crossover. But it is often difficult to decide, which operator should be used when solving a specific optimization problem. So an automatic approach is needed. We propose an adaptive method of selecting evolutionary operators, which takes a set of possible operators as input and learns what operators are efficient for the considered problem. One evolutionary algorithm run should be enough for both learning and obtaining suitable performance. The proposed EA+RL(O) method is based on reinforcement learning. We test it by solving H-IFF and Travelling Salesman optimization problems. The obtained results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms random selection, since it manages to select efficient evolutionary operators and ignore inefficient ones.

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  • (2024)Continuous variation operator configuration for decomposition-based evolutionary multi-objective optimizationSwarm and Evolutionary Computation10.1016/j.swevo.2024.10164489(101644)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2024)Reinforcement learning-assisted evolutionary algorithm: A survey and research opportunitiesSwarm and Evolutionary Computation10.1016/j.swevo.2024.10151786(101517)Online publication date: Apr-2024
  • (2024)Innovative Clustering-Driven Techniques for Enhancing Initial Solutions in Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problems with Machine Learning IntegrationArabian Journal for Science and Engineering10.1007/s13369-024-09094-3Online publication date: 18-May-2024
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    GECCO Comp '14: Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 2014 Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
    July 2014
    1524 pages
    ISBN:9781450328814
    DOI:10.1145/2598394
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Publication History

    Published: 12 July 2014

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    Author Tags

    1. evolutionary algorithms
    2. parameter control

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    • Technical-note

    Funding Sources

    • Government of Russian Federation

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    GECCO '14
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    GECCO '14: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
    July 12 - 16, 2014
    BC, Vancouver, Canada

    Acceptance Rates

    GECCO Comp '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 180 of 544 submissions, 33%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,669 of 4,410 submissions, 38%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Continuous variation operator configuration for decomposition-based evolutionary multi-objective optimizationSwarm and Evolutionary Computation10.1016/j.swevo.2024.10164489(101644)Online publication date: Aug-2024
    • (2024)Reinforcement learning-assisted evolutionary algorithm: A survey and research opportunitiesSwarm and Evolutionary Computation10.1016/j.swevo.2024.10151786(101517)Online publication date: Apr-2024
    • (2024)Innovative Clustering-Driven Techniques for Enhancing Initial Solutions in Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problems with Machine Learning IntegrationArabian Journal for Science and Engineering10.1007/s13369-024-09094-3Online publication date: 18-May-2024
    • (2023)Automated Design of Metaheuristics Using Reinforcement Learning Within a Novel General Search FrameworkIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2022.319729827:4(1072-1084)Online publication date: Aug-2023
    • (2022)The Impact of State Representation on Approximate Q-Learning for a Selection Hyper-heuristicIntelligent Systems10.1007/978-3-031-21686-2_4(45-60)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2022
    • (2021)Learning Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithm From Optimization Experiences by Policy GradientIEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation10.1109/TEVC.2021.306081125:4(666-680)Online publication date: Aug-2021
    • (2021)Online Selection of Heuristic Operators with Deep Q-Network: A Study on the HyFlex FrameworkIntelligent Systems10.1007/978-3-030-91702-9_19(280-294)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2021

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