Multi-objective Genetic Algorithms for grouping problems

• Published in: Applied intelligence (Dordrecht, Netherlands) Netherlands), 2010-10, Vol.33 (2), p.179-192
• Main Author: Korkmaz, Emin Erkan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Clustering; Combinatorial analysis; Computer Science; Crossovers; Encoding; Genetic algorithms; Graph coloring; Machines; Manufacturing; Mechanical Engineering; Mutation; Operators; Optimization; Processes; Representations
• ISSN: 0924-669X; 1573-7497
• DOI: 10.1007/s10489-008-0158-3

Linear Linkage Encoding (LLE) is a convenient representational scheme for Genetic Algorithms (GAs). LLE can be used when a GA is applied to a grouping problem and this representation does not suffer from the redundancy problem that exists in classical encoding schemes. LLE has been mainly used in data clustering. One-point crossover has been utilized in these applications. In fact, the standard recombination operators are not suitable to be used with LLE. These operators can easily disturb the building blocks and cannot fully exploit the power of the representation. In this study, a new crossover operator is introduced for LLE. The operator which is named as group-crossover is tested on the data clustering problem and a very significant performance increase is obtained compared to classical one-point and uniform crossover operations. Graph coloring is the second domain where the proposed framework is tested. This is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem for search methods and no significant success has been obtained on the problem with pure GA. The experimental results denote that GAs powered with LLE can provide satisfactory outcomes in this domain, too.