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Continuous variation operator configuration for decomposition-based evolutionary multi-objective optimization

delete2024-08-01
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PRE
AI
Y
Yuan Liu
J
J. Li *
邹娟 (Juan Zou)
侯章禄 (Zhanglu Hou)
杨圣祥 (Shengxiang Yang)
郑金华 (Jinhua Zheng)
DOI:10.1016/j.swevo.2024.101644delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
There are various multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) for solving multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs), and the significant difference between them lies in the way they generate offspring, which are the so-called variation operators. Since different variation operators have their own characteristics, it is often tedious to select a suitable EA for a given MOP. Even if the optimal operator is assigned, the fixed operator and hyper-parameters make it difficult to balance exploration and exploitation during the evolutionary process. It is imperative to configure variation operators and hyper-parameters automatically during the evolutionary process, which can improve the efficiency of algorithm search. However, numerous configurations only consider operators or discretize hyper-parameters, making it difficult to achieve satisfactory results. In this paper, we formulate the operator configuration as a continuous Markov Decision Process (MDP) and use a suitable Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm to realize the online configuration of EAs. To simplify the deployment of MDP, we adopt a decomposition-based framework and use a one-dimensional vector with a combination of weights and objectives as state spaces. In addition, we take the selection of crossover and mutation operators and the fine-tuning of their hyper-parameters as joint action spaces. With an RL technique, we expect to achieve maximum improvement in the performance of offspring on each preference by selecting an action in a given state. We further explore the effectiveness of the proposed methodology on different characteristic MOPs. Experimental results show that our method is more competitive than other configurations and state-of-the-art EAs.
Keywords:
Multi-objective optimization
Evolutionary algorithm
Reinforcement learning
Operator selection

Journal

Swarm and Evolutionary Computation cover
Swarm and Evolutionary Computation
IF:
8.5
Papers:
2.1K
Citations:
1.0W

Organization

D
de montfort university
Scholars:
2.3K
Papers: 2.7K
Citations: 0
X
xiangtan university
Scholars:
1.5W
Papers: 9.1K
Citations: 8