Skip to main content

Discovering Beneficial Cooperative Structures for the Automated Construction of Heuristics

  • Chapter

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 284))

Abstract

The current research trends on hyper-heuristics design have sprung up in two different flavours: heuristics that choose heuristics and heuristics that generate heuristics. In the latter, the goal is to develop a problem-domain independent strategy to automatically generate a good performing heuristic for specific problems, that is, the input to the algorithm are problems and the output are problem-tailored heuristics. This can be done, for example, by automatically selecting and combining different low-level heuristics into a problem specific and effective strategy. Thus, hyper-heuristics raise the level of generality on automated problem solving by attempting to select and/or generate tailored heuristics for the problem in hand. Some approaches like genetic programming have been proposed for this. In this paper, we report on an alternative methodology that sheds light on simple methodologies that efficiently cooperate by means of local interactions. These entities are seen as building blocks, the combination of which is employed for the automated manufacture of good performing heuristic search strategies.We present proof-of-concept results of applying this methodology to instances of the well-known symmetric TSP. The goal here is to demonstrate feasibility rather than compete with state of the art TSP solvers. This TSP is chosen only because it is an easy to state and well known problem.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Babin, G., Deneault, S., Laporte, G.: Improvements to the or-opt heuristic for the symmetric traveling salesman problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society (58), 402–407 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bader-El-Den, M., Poli, R.: A gp-based hyper-heuristic framework for evolving 3-sat heuristics. In: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, p. 1749. ACM, New York (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Brest, J., Zerovnik, J.: A heuristic for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem. In: 6th Metaheuristics International Conference, pp. 145–150 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Burke, E., Hyde, M., Kendall, G.: Evolving bin packing heuristics with genetic. In: Runarsson, T.P., Beyer, H.-G., Burke, E.K., Merelo-Guervós, J.J., Whitley, L.D., Yao, X. (eds.) PPSN 2006. LNCS, vol. 4193, pp. 860–869. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Burke, E., Hyde, M., Kendall, G., Woodward, J.: Automatic heuristic generation with genetic programming: evolving a jack-of-all-trades or a master of one. In: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 1559–1565. ACM, New York (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Burke, E.K., Hart, E., Kendall, G.N., Newall, J., Ross, P., Schulenburg, S.: Handbook of Meta-Heuristics. In: chap Hyper-Heuristics: An Emerging Direction in Modern Search Technology, pp. 457–474. Kluwer, Dordrecht (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Chakhlevitch, K., Cowling, P.: Hyperheuristics: Recent developments. In: Adaptive and Multilevel Metaheuristics, vol. 136, pp. 3–29. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Cowling, P., Chakhlevitch, K.: Hyperheuristics for managing a large collection of low level heuristics to schedule personnel. In: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1214–1221. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Cowling, P., Kendall, G., Han, L.: An investigation of a hyperheuristic genetic algorithm applied to a trainer scheduling problem. In: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1185–1190. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Krasnogor, N., Smith, J.: Memetic algorithms: The polynomial local search complexity theory perspective. Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms 7, 3–24 (2008)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. Oltean, M., Dumitrescu, D.: Evolving tsp heuristics using multi expression programming. In: Bubak, M., van Albada, G.D., Sloot, P.M.A., Dongarra, J. (eds.) ICCS 2004. LNCS, vol. 3037, pp. 670–673. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Özcan, E., Bilgin, B., Korkmaz, E.: Hill climbers and mutational heuristics in hyperheuristics. In: 9th International Conference on PPSN, pp. 202–211 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Özcan, E., Bilgin, B., Korkmaz, E.: A comprehensive analysis of hyper-heuristics. Intell. Data Anal. 12(1), 3–23 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Pillay, N., Banzhaf, W.: A study of heuristic combinations for hyper-heuristic systems for the uncapacitated examination timetabling problem. European Journal of Operational Research 197(2), 482–491 (2009)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Reinelt, G.: The traveling salesman: Computational solutions for TSP applications. Springer, Heidelberg (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ross, P.: Hyper-heuristics. In: Search Methodologies: Introductory Tutorials in Optimization and Decision Support, pp. 529–556. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ross, P., Schulenburg, S., Marín-Blázquez, J., Hart, E.: Hyper-heuristics: Learning to combine simple heuristics in bin-packing problems. In: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 942–948. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Setubal, J., Meidanis, J.: Introduction to Computational Molecular Biology. PWS Publishing (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Tao, G., Michalewicz, Z.: Inver-over operator for the tsp. In: Eiben, A.E., Bäck, T., Schoenauer, M., Schwefel, H.-P. (eds.) PPSN 1998. LNCS, vol. 1498, pp. 803–812. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Terrazas, G., Landa-Silva, D., Krasnogor, N. (2010). Discovering Beneficial Cooperative Structures for the Automated Construction of Heuristics. In: González, J.R., Pelta, D.A., Cruz, C., Terrazas, G., Krasnogor, N. (eds) Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO 2010). Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 284. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12538-6_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12538-6_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-12537-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-12538-6

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics