进化计算领域文章更新主要包括以下六大方向如下：
基础理论（包括遗传算法、进化策略、遗传编程、群智能等算法设计、理论研究、基准测试、进化思想、算法软件、综述等）
进化优化（包括黑盒优化、多目标优化、约束优化、噪声优化、多任务优化、多模态优化、迁移优化、大规模优化、昂贵优化、学习优化等）
组合优化（包括进化神经组合优化、进化机器人、路线规划、布局布线、工业控制、调度等）
神经进化（包含进化神经网络的参数、超参数、架构、规则等）
进化学习（包括进化特征选择、强化学习、多目标学习、公平性学习、联邦学习、进化计算机视觉、进化自然语言处理、进化数据挖掘等）
应用研究（工业、网络、安全、物理、生物、化学等）
文章来源主要包括：
1. IEEE CIS: CIM, TEVC, TNNLS, TFS, TAI, TETCI, CEC
2. IEEE CS/SMC: TPAMI, TKDE, TPDS, TCYB, TSMC, Proc. IEEE
3. ACM: TELO, GECCO, FOGA, ICML
4. MIT: ECJ, ARTL, JMLR, NIPS
5. Elsevier/Springer: AIJ, SWEVO, SCIS, PPSN
6. AAAI/MK/OR: AAAI, IJCAI, ICLR
7. Else: NMI, NC, PNAS, Nature, Science, ArXiv
基础理论
Using the Empirical Attainment Function for Analyzing Single-Objective Black-Box Optimization Algorithms, IEEE TEVC
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10681433
A widely accepted way to assess the performance of iterative black-box optimizers is to analyze their empirical cumulative distribution function (ECDF) of pre-defined quality targets achieved not later than a given runtime. In this work, we consider an alternative approach, based on the empirical attainment function (EAF) and we show that the target-based ECDF is an approximation of the EAF. We argue that the EAF has several advantages over the target-based ECDF. In particular, it does not require defining a priori quality targets per function, captures performance differences more precisely, and enables the use of additional summary statistics that enrich the analysis. We also show that the average area over the convergence curves is a simpler-to-calculate, but equivalent, measure of anytime performance. To facilitate the accessibility of the EAF, we integrate a module to compute it into the IOHanalyzer platform. Finally, we illustrate the use of the EAF via synthetic examples and via the data available for the BBOB suite.
Theoretical Analysis of Explicit Averaging and Novel Sign Averaging in Comparison-Based Search, IEEE TEVC
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684724
In black-box optimization, noise in the objective function is often inevitable. Noise disrupts the ranking of candidate solutions in comparison-based optimization, possibly deteriorating the search performance compared with a noiseless scenario. Explicit averaging takes the sample average of noisy objective function values and is widely used as a simple and versatile noise-handling technique. Although it is suitable for various applications, it is ineffective if the mean is not finite. We theoretically reveal that explicit averaging has a negative effect on the estimation of ground-truth rankings when assuming stably distributed noise without a finite mean. Alternatively, sign averaging is proposed as a simple but robust noise-handling technique. We theoretically prove that sign averaging estimates the order of the medians of the noisy objective function values for a pair of points with arbitrarily high probability as the number of samples increases. Its advantages over explicit averaging and its robustness are also confirmed through numerical experiments.
进化优化
Automated Metaheuristic Algorithm Design With Autoregressive Learning, IEEE TEVC
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684805
Automated design of metaheuristic algorithms offers an attractive avenue to reduce human effort and gain enhanced performance beyond human intuition. Current automated methods design algorithms within a fixed structure and operate from scratch. This poses a clear gap towards fully discovering potentials over the metaheuristic family and fertilizing from prior design experience. To bridge the gap, this paper proposes an autoregressive learning-based designer for automated design of metaheuristic algorithms. Our designer formulates metaheuristic algorithm design as a sequence generation task, and harnesses an autoregressive generative network to handle the task. This offers two advances. First, through autoregressive inference, the designer generates algorithms with diverse lengths and structures, enabling to fully discover potentials over the metaheuristic family. Second, prior design knowledge learned and accumulated in neurons of the designer can be retrieved for designing algorithms for future problems, paving the way to continual design of algorithms for open-ended problem-solving. Extensive experiments on numeral benchmarks and real-world problems reveal that the proposed designer generates algorithms that outperform all human-created baselines on 24 out of 25 test problems. The generated algorithms display various structures and behaviors, reasonably fitting for different problem-solving contexts. Code is available at https://github.com/auto4opt/ALDeshttps://github.com/auto4opt/ALDes.
A Co-Evolutionary Dual Niching Differential Evolution Algorithm for Nonlinear Equation Systems Optimization, IEEE TETCI
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10680464
A nonlinear equation system often has multiple roots, while finding all roots simultaneously in one run remains a challenging work in numerical optimization. Although many methods have been proposed to solve the problem, few have utilised two algorithms with different characteristics to improve the root rate. To locate as many roots as possible of nonlinear equation systems, in this paper, a co-evolutionary dual niching differential evolution with information sharing and migration is developed. To be specific, firstly it utilizes a dual niching algorithm namely neighborhood-based crowding/speciation differential evolution co-evolutionary to search concurrently; secondly, a parameter adaptation strategy is employed to ameliorate the capability of the dual algorithm; finally, the dual niching differential evolution adaptively performs information sharing and migration according to the evolutionary experience, thereby balancing the population diversity and convergence. To investigate the performance of the proposed approach, thirty nonlinear equation systems with diverse characteristics and a more complex test set are used as the test suite. A comprehensive comparison shows that the proposed method performs well in terms of root rate and success rate when compared with other advanced algorithms.
HRA: A Multi-Criteria Framework for Ranking Metaheuristic Optimization Algorithms
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.11617
Metaheuristic algorithms are essential for solving complex optimization problems in different fields. However, the difficulty in comparing and rating these algorithms remains due to the wide range of performance metrics and problem dimensions usually involved. On the other hand, nonparametric statistical methods and post hoc tests are time-consuming, especially when we only need to identify the top performers among many algorithms. The Hierarchical Rank Aggregation (HRA) algorithm aims to efficiently rank metaheuristic algorithms based on their performance across many criteria and dimensions. The HRA employs a hierarchical framework that begins with collecting performance metrics on various benchmark functions and dimensions. Rank-based normalization is employed for each performance measure to ensure comparability and the robust TOPSIS aggregation is applied to combine these rankings at several hierarchical levels, resulting in a comprehensive ranking of the algorithms. Our study uses data from the CEC 2017 competition to demonstrate the robustness and efficacy of the HRA framework. It examines 30 benchmark functions and evaluates the performance of 13 metaheuristic algorithms across five performance indicators in four distinct dimensions. This presentation highlights the potential of the HRA to enhance the interpretation of the comparative advantages and disadvantages of various algorithms by simplifying practitioners' choices of the most appropriate algorithm for certain optimization problems.
Evolving a Multi-Population Evolutionary-QAOA on Distributed QPUs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10739
Our research combines an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) with a Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) to update the ansatz parameters, in place of traditional gradient-based methods, and benchmark on the Max-Cut problem. We demonstrate that our Evolutionary-QAOA (E-QAOA) pairing performs on par or better than a COBYLA-based QAOA in terms of solution accuracy and variance, for d-3 regular graphs between 4 and 26 nodes, using both max_count and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) for fitness function evaluations. Furthermore, we take our algorithm one step further and present a novel approach by presenting a multi-population EA distributed on two QPUs, which evolves independent and isolated populations in parallel, classically communicating elite individuals. Experiments were conducted on both simulators and IBM quantum hardware, and we investigated the relative performance accuracy and variance.
组合优化
Fixed-Parameter Tractability of the (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm on Random Planted Vertex Covers
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10144
We present the first parameterized analysis of a standard (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm on a distribution of vertex cover problems. We show that if the planted cover is at most logarithmic, restarting the (1+1) EA every O(nlogn) steps will find a cover at least as small as the planted cover in polynomial time for sufficiently dense random graphs p>0.71. For superlogarithmic planted covers, we prove that the (1+1) EA finds a solution in fixed-parameter tractable time in expectation. We complement these theoretical investigations with a number of computational experiments that highlight the interplay between planted cover size, graph density and runtime.
神经演化
Automatic Graph Topology-Aware Transformer, IEEE TNNLS
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10681642
Existing efforts are dedicated to designing many topologies and graph-aware strategies for the graph Transformer, which greatly improve the model’s representation capabilities. However, manually determining the suitable Transformer architecture for a specific graph dataset or task requires extensive expert knowledge and laborious trials. This article proposes an evolutionary graph Transformer architecture search (EGTAS) framework to automate the construction of strong graph Transformers. We build a comprehensive graph Transformer search space with the micro-level and macro-level designs. EGTAS evolves graph Transformer topologies at the macro level and graph-aware strategies at the micro level. Furthermore, a surrogate model based on generic architectural coding is proposed to directly predict the performance of graph Transformers, substantially reducing the evaluation cost of evolutionary search. We demonstrate the efficacy of EGTAS across a range of graph-level and node-level tasks, encompassing both small-scale and large-scale graph datasets. Experimental results and ablation studies show that EGTAS can construct high-performance architectures that rival state-of-the-art manual and automated baselines.
进化学习
TVDO: Tchebycheff Value-Decomposition Optimization for Multiagent Reinforcement Learning, IEEE TNNLS
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684726
In cooperative multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL), centralized training with decentralized execution (CTDE) has recently attracted more attention due to the physical demand. However, the most dilemma therein is the inconsistency between jointly-trained policies and individually executed actions. In this article, we propose a factorized Tchebycheff value-decomposition optimization (TVDO) method to overcome the trouble of inconsistency. In particular, a nonlinear Tchebycheff aggregation function is formulated to realize the global optimum by tightly constraining the upper bound of individual action-value bias, which is inspired by the Tchebycheff method of multiobjective optimization (MOO). We theoretically prove that, under no extra limitations, the factorized value decomposition with Tchebycheff aggregation satisfies the sufficiency and necessity of individual-global-max (IGM), which guarantees the consistency between the global and individual optimal action-value function. Empirically, in the climb and penalty game, we verify that TVDO precisely expresses the global-to-individual value decomposition with a guarantee of policy consistency. Meanwhile, we evaluate TVDO in the StarCraft multiagent challenge (SMAC) benchmark, and extensive experiments demonstrate that TVDO achieves a significant performance superiority over some SOTA MARL baselines.
Optimal Evolution Strategy for Continuous Strategy Games on Complex Networks via Reinforcement Learning, IEEE TNNLS
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684785
This article presents an optimal evolution strategy for continuous strategy games on complex networks via reinforcement learning (RL). In the past, evolutionary game theory usually assumed that agents use the same selection intensity when interacting, ignoring the differences in their learning abilities and learning willingness. Individuals are reluctant to change their strategies too much. Therefore, we design an adaptive strategy updating framework with various selection intensities for continuous strategy games on complex networks based on imitation dynamics, allowing agents to achieve the optimal state and a higher cooperation level with the minimal strategy changes. The optimal updating strategy is acquired using a coupled Hamilton–Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation by minimizing the performance function. This function aims to maximize individual payoffs while minimizing strategy changes. Furthermore, a value iteration (VI) RL algorithm is proposed to approximate the HJB solutions and learn the optimal strategy updating rules. The RL algorithm employs actor and critic neural networks to approximate strategy changes and performance functions, along with the gradient descent weight update approach. Meanwhile, the stability and convergence of the proposed methods have been proved by the designed Lyapunov function. Simulations validate the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed methods in different games and complex networks.
Continual Learning From a Stream of APIs, IEEE TPAMI
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684743
Continual learning (CL) aims to learn new tasks without forgetting previous tasks. However, existing CL methods require a large amount of raw data, which is often unavailable due to copyright considerations and privacy risks. Instead, stakeholders usually release pre-trained machine learning models as a service (MLaaS), which users can access via APIs. This paper considers two practical-yet-novel CL settings: data-efficient CL (DECL-APIs) and data-free CL (DFCL-APIs), which achieve CL from a stream of APIs with partial or no raw data. Performing CL under these two new settings faces several challenges: unavailable full raw data, unknown model parameters, heterogeneous models of arbitrary architecture and scale, and catastrophic forgetting of previous APIs. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel data-free cooperative continual distillation learning framework that distills knowledge from a stream of APIs into a CL model by generating pseudo data, just by querying APIs. Specifically, our framework includes two cooperative generators and one CL model, forming their training as an adversarial game. We first use the CL model and the current API as fixed discriminators to train generators via a derivative-free method. Generators adversarially generate hard and diverse synthetic data to maximize the response gap between the CL model and the API. Next, we train the CL model by minimizing the gap between the responses of the CL model and the black-box API on synthetic data, to transfer the API's knowledge to the CL model. Furthermore, we propose a new regularization term based on network similarity to prevent catastrophic forgetting of previous APIs. Our method performs comparably to classic CL with full raw data on the MNIST and SVHN datasets in the DFCL-APIs setting. In the DECL-APIs setting, our method achieves $0.97\times$ , $0.75\times$ and $0.69\times$ performance of classic CL on the more challenging CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and MiniImageNet, respectively.
Genetic Programming for Automatically Evolving Multiple Features to Classification, EVCO
https://direct.mit.edu/evco/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/evco_a_00359/124469/Genetic-Programming-for-Automatically-Evolving?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Performing classification on high-dimensional data poses a significant challenge due to the huge search space. Moreover, complex feature interactions introduce an additional obstacle. The problems can be addressed by using feature selection to select relevant features or feature construction to construct a small set of high-level features. However, performing feature selection or feature construction only might make the feature set suboptimal. To remedy this problem, this study investigates the use of genetic programming for simultaneous feature selection and feature construction in addressing different classification tasks. The proposed approach is tested on 16 datasets and compared with seven methods including both feature selection and feature constructions techniques. The results show that the obtained feature sets with the constructed and/or selected features can significantly increase the classification accuracy and reduce the dimensionality of the datasets. Further analysis reveals the complementarity of the obtained features leading to the promising classification performance of the proposed method.
应用研究
A Simple yet Effective Greedy Evolutionary Strategy for RNA Design, IEEE TEVC
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10680386
RNA design, also known as the RNA inverse folding problem, involves discovering a nucleotide sequence that folds into a target structure. This problem has been addressed from a wide number of approaches, improving the ability to solve it in a reasonable time over time. Despite all these efforts, today no method has completely solved the problem. We present GREED-RNA, a new RNA design algorithm, based on a simple greedy evolutionary strategy. The main feature is the use of several objective functions (Base-pair distance, Hamming distance, probability over ensemble, partition function, ensemble defect and GC-content) to select the best solution in each iteration, changing their weight according to the problem-solving conditions. The performance of GREED-RNA was tested using the Eterna100 benchmark, widely used in this area and never fully solved by any method. In addition, a comparative analysis against several published RNA design methods considering three metrics (solved structures, success rate and execution time), allowed us to verify that GREED-RNA performs better than previously developed methods, thus successfully improving the current ability to solve this problem. This tool also allows users to select a range within which the GC-content of the solution sequences must fall. Source code and results are available at https://github.com/iARN-unex/GREED-RNA.
Explicit Evolutionary Framework With Multitasking Feature Fusion for Optimizing Operational Parameters in Aluminum Electrolysis Process, IEEE TCYB
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10681543
Collaboratively optimizing operational parameters through leveraging accumulated production experience is an innovative approach to reducing energy consumption in aluminum electrolysis cells (AECs). Due to the dynamic heterogeneity of various AECs, an explicit evolutionary multitasking (EMT) framework capable of incorporating different optimizers, has the potential to tackle this challenge effectively. However, there is a notable gap in theoretical research on multitasking collaborative evolutionary algorithms specifically applied to AECs. Meanwhile, existing explicit EMT algorithms often overlook the intertask correlation of feature information extracted in isolation from individual tasks. These issues significantly limit the development of synergistic effects in multitasking optimization for addressing parameter design in AECs. To address these limitations, this work proposes an explicit evolutionary framework with multitasking feature fusion (EMFF). This framework thoroughly considers the potential connections among feature information from different tasks. It achieves effective knowledge transfer by the design of a unique multitasking feature fusion mechanism, which enhances the information value of source tasks for target tasks. Furthermore, a transfer individual derivation (TID) strategy is introduced to ensure the rapid evolution of critical knowledge. Finally, comprehensive components and designed process are presented. Experimental results demonstrate EMFF’s exceptional performance in various benchmark tests and real-world AEC parameter optimization cases.
Model calibration using a parallel differential evolution algorithm in computational neuroscience: simulation of stretch induced nerve deficit
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.12567
Neuronal damage, in the form of both brain and spinal cord injuries, is one of the major causes of disability and death in young adults worldwide. One way to assess the direct damage occurring after a mechanical insult is the simulation of the neuronal cells functional deficits following the mechanical event. In this study, we use a coupled mechanical electrophysiological model with several free parameters that are required to be calibrated against experimental results. The calibration is carried out by means of an evolutionary algorithm (differential evolution, DE) that needs to evaluate each configuration of parameters on six different damage cases, each of them taking several minutes to compute. To minimise the simulation time of the parameter tuning for the DE, the stretch of one unique fixed-diameter axon with a simplified triggering process is used to speed up the calculations. The model is then leveraged for the parameter optimization of the more realistic bundle of independent axons, an impractical configuration to run on a single processor computer. To this end, we have developed a parallel implementation based on OpenMP that runs on a multi-processor taking advantage of all the available computational power. The parallel DE algorithm obtains good results, outperforming the best effort achieved by published manual calibration, in a fraction of the time. While not being able to fully capture the experimental results, the resulting nerve model provides a complex averaging framework for nerve damage simulation able to simulate gradual axonal functional alteration in a bundle.
TX-Gen: Multi-Objective Optimization for Sparse Counterfactual Explanations for Time-Series Classification
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09461
In time-series classification, understanding model decisions is crucial for their application in high-stakes domains such as healthcare and finance. Counterfactual explanations, which provide insights by presenting alternative inputs that change model predictions, offer a promising solution. However, existing methods for generating counterfactual explanations for time-series data often struggle with balancing key objectives like proximity, sparsity, and validity. In this paper, we introduce TX-Gen, a novel algorithm for generating counterfactual explanations based on the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). TX-Gen leverages evolutionary multi-objective optimization to find a diverse set of counterfactuals that are both sparse and valid, while maintaining minimal dissimilarity to the original time series. By incorporating a flexible reference-guided mechanism, our method improves the plausibility and interpretability of the counterfactuals without relying on predefined assumptions. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that TX-Gen outperforms existing methods in generating high-quality counterfactuals, making time-series models more transparent and interpretable.
