Adaptation, Learning, and Optimization – serie

This book bridges the widening gap between two crucial constituents of computational intelligence: the rapidly advancing technologies of machine learning in the digital information age, and the relatively slow-moving field of general-purpose search and optimization algorithms. With this in mind, the book serves to offer a data-driven view of optimization, through the framework of memetic computation (MC). The authors provide a summary of the complete timeline of research activities in MC – beginning with the initiation of memes as local search heuristics hybridized with evolutionary algorithms, to their modern interpretation as computationally encoded building blocks of problem-solving knowledge that can be learned from one task and adaptively transmitted to another. In the light of recent research advances, the authors emphasize the further development of MC as a simultaneous problem learning and optimization paradigm with the potential to showcase human-like problem-solvingprowess; that is, by equipping optimization engines to acquire increasing levels of intelligence over time through embedded memes learned independently or via interactions. In other words, the adaptive utilization of available knowledge memes makes it possible for optimization engines to tailor custom search behaviors on the fly – thereby paving the way to general-purpose problem-solving ability (or artificial general intelligence). In this regard, the book explores some of the latest concepts from the optimization literature, including, the sequential transfer of knowledge across problems, multitasking, and large-scale (high dimensional) search, systematically discussing associated algorithmic developments that align with the general theme of memetics. The presented ideas are intended to be accessible to a wide audience of scientific researchers, engineers, students, and optimization practitioners who are familiar with the commonly used terminologies of evolutionary computation. A full appreciation of the mathematical formalizations and algorithmic contributions requires an elementary background in probability, statistics, and the concepts of machine learning. A prior knowledge of surrogate-assisted/Bayesian optimization techniques is useful, but not essential.

This book presents recent research on computational intelligence (CI) algorithms in the field of sport. In the modern age, information technologies have greatly reduced the need for human effort in the carrying out of many daily tasks. These technologies have radically influenced the lives of humans, and the information society in general. Unfortunately, these advances have brought with them certain negative effects, including the encouragement of sedentary lifestyles and the attendant health problems such as obesity that these engender. Other modern maladies, chiefly cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, have also been on the increase. Today, sports are virtually the only activity that still connects modern humans to their original lifestyle, which was based on physical motion. This book tears familiarizing sports scientists with the foundations of computational intelligence, while at the same time presenting the problems that have arisen in thetraining domain to computer scientists. Lastly, the book proposes the use of an Artificial Sports Trainer designed to enhance the training of modern athletes who cannot afford the considerable expense of hiring a human personal trainer. This intelligent system can monitor performance and design and direct appropriate future training, thus promoting both healthy lifestyles and competitive success in athletes.

Brain Storm Optimization (BSO) algorithms are a new kind of swarm intelligence method, which is based on the collective behavior of human beings, i.e., on the brainstorming process. Since the introduction of BSO algorithms in 2011, many studies on them have been conducted. They not only offer an optimization method, but could also be viewed as a framework of optimization techniques. The process employed in the algorithms could be simplified as a framework with two basic operations: the converging operation and the diverging operation. A “good enough” optimum could be obtained through recursive solution divergence and convergence. The resulting optimization algorithm would naturally have the capability of both convergence and divergence.This book is primarily intended for researchers, engineers, and graduate students with an interest in BSO algorithms and their applications. The chapters cover various aspects of BSO algorithms, and collectively provide broad insights into what these algorithms have to offer. The book is ideally suited as a graduate-level textbook, whereby students may be tasked with the study of the rich variants of BSO algorithms that involves a hands-on implementation to demonstrate the utility and applicability of BSO algorithms in solving optimization problems.

Brain Storm Optimization (BSO) algorithms are a new kind of swarm intelligence method, which is based on the collective behavior of human beings, i.e., on the brainstorming process. Since the introduction of BSO algorithms in 2011, many studies on them have been conducted. They not only offer an optimization method, but could also be viewed as a framework of optimization techniques. The process employed in the algorithms could be simplified as a framework with two basic operations: the converging operation and the diverging operation. A “good enough” optimum could be obtained through recursive solution divergence and convergence. The resulting optimization algorithm would naturally have the capability of both convergence and divergence.This book is primarily intended for researchers, engineers, and graduate students with an interest in BSO algorithms and their applications. The chapters cover various aspects of BSO algorithms, and collectively provide broad insights into what these algorithms have to offer. The book is ideally suited as a graduate-level textbook, whereby students may be tasked with the study of the rich variants of BSO algorithms that involves a hands-on implementation to demonstrate the utility and applicability of BSO algorithms in solving optimization problems.

This book offers several new GP approaches to feature learning for image classification. Image classification is an important task in computer vision and machine learning with a wide range of applications. Feature learning is a fundamental step in image classification, but it is difficult due to the high variations of images. Genetic Programming (GP) is an evolutionary computation technique that can automatically evolve computer programs to solve any given problem. This is an important research field of GP and image classification. No book has been published in this field. This book shows how different techniques, e.g., image operators, ensembles, and surrogate, are proposed and employed to improve the accuracy and/or computational efficiency of GP for image classification. The proposed methods are applied to many different image classification tasks, and the effectiveness and interpretability of the learned models will be demonstrated. This book is suitable as a graduate andpostgraduate level textbook in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and evolutionary computation.

This book offers several new GP approaches to feature learning for image classification. Image classification is an important task in computer vision and machine learning with a wide range of applications. Feature learning is a fundamental step in image classification, but it is difficult due to the high variations of images. Genetic Programming (GP) is an evolutionary computation technique that can automatically evolve computer programs to solve any given problem. This is an important research field of GP and image classification. No book has been published in this field. This book shows how different techniques, e.g., image operators, ensembles, and surrogate, are proposed and employed to improve the accuracy and/or computational efficiency of GP for image classification. The proposed methods are applied to many different image classification tasks, and the effectiveness and interpretability of the learned models will be demonstrated. This book is suitable as a graduate andpostgraduate level textbook in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and evolutionary computation.

This book provides readers the recent algorithmic advances towards realizing the notion of optinformatics in evolutionary learning and optimization. The book also provides readers a variety of practical applications, including inter-domain learning in vehicle route planning, data-driven techniques for feature engineering in automated machine learning, as well as evolutionary transfer reinforcement learning. Through reading this book, the readers will understand the concept of optinformatics, recent research progresses in this direction, as well as particular algorithm designs and application of optinformatics.Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are adaptive search approaches that take inspiration from the principles of natural selection and genetics. Due to their efficacy of global search and ease of usage, EAs have been widely deployed to address complex optimization problems occurring in a plethora of real-world domains, including image processing, automation of machine learning, neural architecture search, urban logistics planning, etc. Despite the success enjoyed by EAs, it is worth noting that most existing EA optimizers conduct the evolutionary search process from scratch, ignoring the data that may have been accumulated from different problems solved in the past. However, today, it is well established that real-world problems seldom exist in isolation, such that harnessing the available data from related problems could yield useful information for more efficient problem-solving. Therefore, in recent years, there is an increasing research trend in conducting knowledge learning and data processing along the course of an optimization process, with the goal of achieving accelerated search in conjunction with better solution quality. To this end, the term optinformatics has been coined in the literature as the incorporation of information processing and data mining (i.e., informatics) techniques into the optimization process.The primary market of this book is researchers from both academia and industry, who are working on computational intelligence methods and their applications.  This book is also written to be used as a textbook for a postgraduate course in computational intelligence emphasizing methodologies at the intersection of optimization and machine learning.

This book provides readers the recent algorithmic advances towards realizing the notion of optinformatics in evolutionary learning and optimization. The book also provides readers a variety of practical applications, including inter-domain learning in vehicle route planning, data-driven techniques for feature engineering in automated machine learning, as well as evolutionary transfer reinforcement learning. Through reading this book, the readers will understand the concept of optinformatics, recent research progresses in this direction, as well as particular algorithm designs and application of optinformatics.Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are adaptive search approaches that take inspiration from the principles of natural selection and genetics. Due to their efficacy of global search and ease of usage, EAs have been widely deployed to address complex optimization problems occurring in a plethora of real-world domains, including image processing, automation of machine learning, neural architecture search, urban logistics planning, etc. Despite the success enjoyed by EAs, it is worth noting that most existing EA optimizers conduct the evolutionary search process from scratch, ignoring the data that may have been accumulated from different problems solved in the past. However, today, it is well established that real-world problems seldom exist in isolation, such that harnessing the available data from related problems could yield useful information for more efficient problem-solving. Therefore, in recent years, there is an increasing research trend in conducting knowledge learning and data processing along the course of an optimization process, with the goal of achieving accelerated search in conjunction with better solution quality. To this end, the term optinformatics has been coined in the literature as the incorporation of information processing and data mining (i.e., informatics) techniques into the optimization process.The primary market of this book is researchers from both academia and industry, who are working on computational intelligence methods and their applications.  This book is also written to be used as a textbook for a postgraduate course in computational intelligence emphasizing methodologies at the intersection of optimization and machine learning.

This book consists of eight chapters, authored by distinguished researchers and practitioners, that highlight the state of the art and recent trends in addressing the project portfolio selection and scheduling problem (PPSSP) across a variety of domains, particularly defense, social programs, supply chains, and finance. Many organizations face the challenge of selecting and scheduling a subset of available projects subject to various resource and operational constraints. In the simplest scenario, the primary objective for an organization is to maximize the value added through funding and implementing a portfolio of projects, subject to the available budget. However, there are other major difficulties that are often associated with this problem such as qualitative project benefits, multiple conflicting objectives, complex project interdependencies, workforce and manufacturing constraints, and deep uncertainty regarding project costs, benefits, and completion times.It is well known that the PPSSP is an NP-hard problem and, thus, there is no known polynomial-time algorithm for this problem. Despite the complexity associated with solving the PPSSP, many traditional approaches to this problem make use of exact solvers. While exact solvers provide definitive optimal solutions, they quickly become prohibitively expensive in terms of computation time when the problem size is increased. In contrast, evolutionary and memetic computing afford the capability for autonomous heuristic approaches and expert knowledge to be combined and thereby provide an efficient means for high-quality approximation solutions to be attained. As such, these approaches can provide near real-time decision support information for portfolio design that can be used to augment and improve existing human-centric strategic decision-making processes. This edited book provides the reader with a broad overview of the PPSSP, its associated challenges, and approaches to addressing the problem using evolutionary and memetic computing.

This book consists of eight chapters, authored by distinguished researchers and practitioners, that highlight the state of the art and recent trends in addressing the project portfolio selection and scheduling problem (PPSSP) across a variety of domains, particularly defense, social programs, supply chains, and finance. Many organizations face the challenge of selecting and scheduling a subset of available projects subject to various resource and operational constraints. In the simplest scenario, the primary objective for an organization is to maximize the value added through funding and implementing a portfolio of projects, subject to the available budget. However, there are other major difficulties that are often associated with this problem such as qualitative project benefits, multiple conflicting objectives, complex project interdependencies, workforce and manufacturing constraints, and deep uncertainty regarding project costs, benefits, and completion times.It is well known that the PPSSP is an NP-hard problem and, thus, there is no known polynomial-time algorithm for this problem. Despite the complexity associated with solving the PPSSP, many traditional approaches to this problem make use of exact solvers. While exact solvers provide definitive optimal solutions, they quickly become prohibitively expensive in terms of computation time when the problem size is increased. In contrast, evolutionary and memetic computing afford the capability for autonomous heuristic approaches and expert knowledge to be combined and thereby provide an efficient means for high-quality approximation solutions to be attained. As such, these approaches can provide near real-time decision support information for portfolio design that can be used to augment and improve existing human-centric strategic decision-making processes. This edited book provides the reader with a broad overview of the PPSSP, its associated challenges, and approaches to addressing the problem using evolutionary and memetic computing.

This book provides a collection of recent research works on learning from decentralized data, transferring information from one domain to another, and addressing theoretical issues on improving the privacy and incentive factors of federated learning as well as its connection with transfer learning and reinforcement learning. Over the last few years, the machine learning community has become fascinated by federated and transfer learning. Transfer and federated learning have achieved great success and popularity in many different fields of application. The intended audience of this book is students and academics aiming to apply federated and transfer learning to solve different kinds of real-world problems, as well as scientists, researchers, and practitioners in AI industries, autonomous vehicles, and cyber-physical systems who wish to pursue new scientific innovations and update their knowledge on federated and transfer learning and their applications.

This book provides a collection of recent research works on learning from decentralized data, transferring information from one domain to another, and addressing theoretical issues on improving the privacy and incentive factors of federated learning as well as its connection with transfer learning and reinforcement learning. Over the last few years, the machine learning community has become fascinated by federated and transfer learning. Transfer and federated learning have achieved great success and popularity in many different fields of application. The intended audience of this book is students and academics aiming to apply federated and transfer learning to solve different kinds of real-world problems, as well as scientists, researchers, and practitioners in AI industries, autonomous vehicles, and cyber-physical systems who wish to pursue new scientific innovations and update their knowledge on federated and transfer learning and their applications.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, and heal. But true progress depends on more than raw power—it requires systems that are efficient, reliable, and trustworthy.Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Efficiency, Reliability, and Innovations in Machine Learning, Healthcare, and Blockchain explores cutting-edge breakthroughs across machine learning, healthcare, and blockchain. From interpretable tensor models and life-changing medical applications to secure decentralized learning and safer large language models, this book highlights how innovation can meet responsibility.Written by leading researchers, this book is an essential resource for anyone looking to understand and shape the next generation of AI.

In recent years, ELM has emerged as a revolutionary technique of computational intelligence, and has attracted considerable attentions. An extreme learning machine (ELM) is a single layer feed-forward neural network alike learning system, whose connections from the input layer to the hidden layer are randomly generated, while the connections from the hidden layer to the output layer are learned through linear learning methods. The outstanding merits of extreme learning machine (ELM) are its fast learning speed, trivial human intervene and high scalability.This book contains some selected papers from the International Conference on Extreme Learning Machine 2013, which was held in Beijing China, October 15-17, 2013. This conference aims to bring together the researchers and practitioners of extreme learning machine from a variety of fields including artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and bioinformatics, system modelling and control, and signal and image processing, to promote research and discussions of “learning without iterative tuning".This book covers algorithms and applications of ELM. It gives readers a glance of the newest developments of ELM.

This book describes how the principle of self-sufficiency can be applied to a reconfigurable modular robotic organism. It shows the design considerations for a novel REPLICATOR robotic platform, both hardware and software, featuring the behavioral characteristics of social insect colonies. Following a comprehensive overview of some of the bio-inspired techniques already available, and of the state-of-the-art in re-configurable modular robotic systems, the book presents a novel power management system with fault-tolerant energy sharing, as well as its implementation in the REPLICATOR robotic modules. In addition, the book discusses, for the first time, the concept of “artificial energy homeostasis” in the context of a modular robotic organism, and shows its verification on a custom-designed simulation framework in different dynamic power distribution and fault tolerance scenarios. This book offers an ideal reference guide for both hardware engineers and software developers involved in the design and implementation of autonomous robotic systems.

This carefully edited book takes a walk through recent advances in adaptation and hybridization in the Computational Intelligence (CI) domain. It consists of ten chapters that are divided into three parts. The first part illustrates background information and provides some theoretical foundation tackling the CI domain, the second part deals with the adaptation in CI algorithms, while the third part focuses on the hybridization in CI.This book can serve as an ideal reference for researchers and students of computer science, electrical and civil engineering, economy, and natural sciences that are confronted with solving the optimization, modeling and simulation problems. It covers the recent advances in CI that encompass Nature-inspired algorithms, like Artificial Neural networks, Evolutionary Algorithms and Swarm Intelligence –based algorithms.

The work presented in this book is a combination of theoretical advancements of big data analysis, cloud computing, and their potential applications in scientific computing. The theoretical advancements are supported with illustrative examples and its applications in handling real life problems. The applications are mostly undertaken from real life situations. The book discusses major issues pertaining to big data analysis using computational intelligence techniques and some issues of cloud computing. An elaborate bibliography is provided at the end of each chapter. The material in this book includes concepts, figures, graphs, and tables to guide researchers in the area of big data analysis and cloud computing.

In recent years, ELM has emerged as a revolutionary technique of computational intelligence, and has attracted considerable attentions. An extreme learning machine (ELM) is a single layer feed-forward neural network alike learning system, whose connections from the input layer to the hidden layer are randomly generated, while the connections from the hidden layer to the output layer are learned through linear learning methods. The outstanding merits of extreme learning machine (ELM) are its fast learning speed, trivial human intervene and high scalability.This book contains some selected papers from the International Conference on Extreme Learning Machine 2013, which was held in Beijing China, October 15-17, 2013. This conference aims to bring together the researchers and practitioners of extreme learning machine from a variety of fields including artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and bioinformatics, system modelling and control, and signal and image processing, to promote research and discussions of “learning without iterative tuning".This book covers algorithms and applications of ELM. It gives readers a glance of the newest developments of ELM.

This carefully edited book takes a walk through recent advances in adaptation and hybridization in the Computational Intelligence (CI) domain. It consists of ten chapters that are divided into three parts. The first part illustrates background information and provides some theoretical foundation tackling the CI domain, the second part deals with the adaptation in CI algorithms, while the third part focuses on the hybridization in CI.This book can serve as an ideal reference for researchers and students of computer science, electrical and civil engineering, economy, and natural sciences that are confronted with solving the optimization, modeling and simulation problems. It covers the recent advances in CI that encompass Nature-inspired algorithms, like Artificial Neural networks, Evolutionary Algorithms and Swarm Intelligence –based algorithms.

The work presented in this book is a combination of theoretical advancements of big data analysis, cloud computing, and their potential applications in scientific computing. The theoretical advancements are supported with illustrative examples and its applications in handling real life problems. The applications are mostly undertaken from real life situations. The book discusses major issues pertaining to big data analysis using computational intelligence techniques and some issues of cloud computing. An elaborate bibliography is provided at the end of each chapter. The material in this book includes concepts, figures, graphs, and tables to guide researchers in the area of big data analysis and cloud computing.

This book describes how the principle of self-sufficiency can be applied to a reconfigurable modular robotic organism. It shows the design considerations for a novel REPLICATOR robotic platform, both hardware and software, featuring the behavioral characteristics of social insect colonies. Following a comprehensive overview of some of the bio-inspired techniques already available, and of the state-of-the-art in re-configurable modular robotic systems, the book presents a novel power management system with fault-tolerant energy sharing, as well as its implementation in the REPLICATOR robotic modules. In addition, the book discusses, for the first time, the concept of “artificial energy homeostasis” in the context of a modular robotic organism, and shows its verification on a custom-designed simulation framework in different dynamic power distribution and fault tolerance scenarios. This book offers an ideal reference guide for both hardware engineers and software developers involved in the design and implementation of autonomous robotic systems.

This book covers the most recent advances in the field of evolutionary multiobjective optimization. With the aim of drawing the attention of up-and coming scientists towards exciting prospects at the forefront of computational intelligence, the authors have made an effort to ensure that the ideas conveyed herein are accessible to the widest audience. The book begins with a summary of the basic concepts in multi-objective optimization. This is followed by brief discussions on various algorithms that have been proposed over the years for solving such problems, ranging from classical (mathematical) approaches to sophisticated evolutionary ones that are capable of seamlessly tackling practical challenges such as non-convexity, multi-modality, the presence of multiple constraints, etc. Thereafter, some of the key emerging aspects that are likely to shape future research directions in the field are presented. These include: optimization in dynamic environments, multi-objective bilevel programming, handling high dimensionality under many objectives, and evolutionary multitasking. In addition to theory and methodology, this book describes several real-world applications from various domains, which will expose the readers to the versatility of evolutionary multi-objective optimization.

This book covers the most recent advances in the field of evolutionary multiobjective optimization. With the aim of drawing the attention of up-and coming scientists towards exciting prospects at the forefront of computational intelligence, the authors have made an effort to ensure that the ideas conveyed herein are accessible to the widest audience. The book begins with a summary of the basic concepts in multi-objective optimization. This is followed by brief discussions on various algorithms that have been proposed over the years for solving such problems, ranging from classical (mathematical) approaches to sophisticated evolutionary ones that are capable of seamlessly tackling practical challenges such as non-convexity, multi-modality, the presence of multiple constraints, etc. Thereafter, some of the key emerging aspects that are likely to shape future research directions in the field are presented. These include: optimization in dynamic environments, multi-objective bilevel programming, handling high dimensionality under many objectives, and evolutionary multitasking. In addition to theory and methodology, this book describes several real-world applications from various domains, which will expose the readers to the versatility of evolutionary multi-objective optimization.

I ?rst met Jingqiao when he had just commenced his PhD research in evolutionary algorithms with Arthur Sanderson at Rensselaer. Jingqiao's goals then were the investigation and development of a novel class of se- adaptivedi?erentialevolutionalgorithms,later calledJADE. I had remarked to Jingqiao then that Arthur always appreciated strong theoretical foun- tions in his research, so Jingqiao's prior mathematically rigorous work in communications systems would be very useful experience. Later in 2007, whenJingqiaohadcompletedmostofthetheoreticalandinitialexperimental work on JADE, I invited him to spend a year at GE Global Research where he applied his developments to several interesting and important real-world problems. Most evolutionary algorithm conferences usually have their share of in- vative algorithm oriented papers which seek to best the state of the art - gorithms. The best algorithms of a time-frame create a foundation for a new generationof innovativealgorithms, and so on, fostering a meta-evolutionary search for superior evolutionary algorithms.In the past two decades, during whichinterest andresearchin evolutionaryalgorithmshavegrownworldwide by leaps and bounds, engaging the curiosity of researchers and practitioners frommanydiversescienceandtechnologycommunities,developingstand-out algorithms is getting progressively harder.

Computational intelligence encompasses a wide variety of techniques that allow computation to learn, to adapt, and to seek. That is, they may be designed to learn information without explicit programming regarding the nature of the content to be retained, they may be imbued with the functionality to adapt to maintain their course within a complex and unpredictably changing environment, and they may help us seek out truths about our own dynamics and lives through their inclusion in complex system modeling. These capabilities place our ability to compute in a category apart from our ability to erect suspension bridges, although both are products of technological advancement and reflect an increased understanding of our world. In this book, we show how to unify aspects of learning and adaptation within the computational intelligence framework. While a number of algorithms exist that fall under the umbrella of computational intelligence, with new ones added every year, all of them focus on the capabilities of learning, adapting, and helping us seek. So, the term unified computational intelligence relates not to the individual algorithms but to the underlying goals driving them. This book focuses on the computational intelligence areas of neural networks and dynamic programming, showing how to unify aspects of these areas to create new, more powerful, computational intelligence architectures to apply to new problem domains.

In modern science and engineering, laboratory experiments are replaced by high fidelity and computationally expensive simulations. Using such simulations reduces costs and shortens development times but introduces new challenges to design optimization process. Examples of such challenges include limited computational resource for simulation runs, complicated response surface of the simulation inputs-outputs, and etc.Under such difficulties, classical optimization and analysis methods may perform poorly. This motivates the application of computational intelligence methods such as evolutionary algorithms, neural networks and fuzzy logic, which often perform well in such settings. This is the first book to introduce the emerging field of computational intelligence in expensive optimization problems. Topics covered include: dedicated implementations of evolutionary algorithms, neural networks and fuzzy logic. reduction of expensive evaluations (modelling, variable-fidelity, fitness inheritance), frameworks for optimization (model management, complexity control, model selection), parallelization of algorithms (implementation issues on clusters, grids, parallel machines), incorporation of expert systems and human-system interface, single and multiobjective algorithms, data mining and statistical analysis, analysis of real-world cases (such as multidisciplinary design optimization).The edited book provides both theoretical treatments and real-world insights gained by experience, all contributed by leading researchers in the respective fields. As such, it is a comprehensive reference for researchers, practitioners, and advanced-level students interested in both the theory and practice of using computational intelligence for expensive optimization problems.

Optimization is an integral part to science and engineering. Most real-world applications involve complex optimization processes, which are di?cult to solve without advanced computational tools. With the increasing challenges of ful?lling optimization goals of current applications there is a strong drive to advancethe developmentofe?cientoptimizers. The challengesintroduced by emerging problems include: * objective functions which are prohibitively expensive to evaluate, so ty- callysoonlyasmallnumber ofobjectivefunctionevaluationscanbemade during the entire search, * objective functions which are highly multimodal or discontinuous, and * non-stationary problems which may change in time (dynamic). Classical optimizers may perform poorly or even may fail to produce any improvement over the starting vector in the face of such challenges. This has motivated researchers to explore the use computational intelligence (CI) to augment classical methods in tackling such challenging problems. Such methods include population-based search methods such as: a) evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization and b) non-linear mapping and knowledgeembedding approachessuchasarti?cialneuralnetworksandfuzzy logic, to name a few.Such approaches have been shown to perform well in challenging settings. Speci?cally, CI are powerful tools which o?er several potential bene?ts such as: a) robustness (impose little or no requirements on the objective function) b) versatility (handle highly non-linear mappings) c) self-adaptionto improveperformance and d) operationin parallel(making it easy to decompose complex tasks). However, the successful application of CI methods to real-world problems is not straightforward and requires both expert knowledge and trial-and-error experiments.

One major branch of enhancing the performance of evolutionary algorithms is the exploitation of linkage learning. This monograph aims to capture the recent progress of linkage learning, by compiling a series of focused technical chapters to keep abreast of the developments and trends in the area of linkage. In evolutionary algorithms, linkage models the relation between decision variables with the genetic linkage observed in biological systems, and linkage learning connects computational optimization methodologies and natural evolution mechanisms. Exploitation of linkage learning can enable us to design better evolutionary algorithms as well as to potentially gain insight into biological systems. Linkage learning has the potential to become one of the dominant aspects of evolutionary algorithms; research in this area can potentially yield promising results in addressing the scalability issues.

Differential evolution has proven itself a very simple while very powerful stochastic global optimizer. It has been applied to solve problems in many scientific and engineering fields. This book focuses on applications of differential evolution in electromagnetics to showcase its achievement and capability in solving synthesis and design problems in electromagnetics.Topics covered in this book include:•A comprehensive up-to-date literature survey on differential evolution•A systematic description of differential evolution•A topical review on applications of differential evolution in electromagnetics•Five new application examplesThis book is ideal for electromagnetic researchers and people in differential evolution community. It is also a valuable reference book for researchers and students in the optimization or electrical and electronic engineering field. In addition, managers and engineers in relevant fields will find it a helpful introductory guide.