Virtual Loser Genetic Algorithm for Dynamic Environments

Authors

Abstract

Memory-based Evolutionary Algorithms in Dynamic Optimization Problems (DOPs) store the best solutions in order to reuse them in future situations. The memorization of the best solutions can be direct (the best individual of the current population is stored) or associative (additional information from the current population is also stored). This paper explores a different type of associative memory to use in Evolutionary Algorithms for DOPs. The memory stores the cur- rent best individual and a vector of inhibitions that reflect past errors performed during the evolutionary process. When a change is detected in the environment the best solution is retrieved from memory and the vector of inhibitions associated to this individual is used to create new solutions avoiding the repetition of past errors. This algorithm is called Virtual Loser Genetic Algorithm and was tested in different dynamic environments created using the XOR DOP generator. The results show that the proposed memory scheme significantly enhances the Evolutionary Algorithms in cyclic dynamic environments.

Keywords

Evolutionary Computation, Dynamic Optimization, Memory, Virtual Loser

Subject

Evolutionary Computation

Conference

In C. Di Chio et al. (Eds.): EvoApplications 2012, LNCS 7248, pp. 539–548, 2012. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012, Malaga, Spain, 10-14 April 2012., April 2012