Metaheuristic algorithms are considered as generic optimization tools that can solve very complex problems characterized by having very large search spaces. Metaheuristic methods reduce the effective size of the search space through the use of effective search strategies. Book Features: Provides a unified view of the most popular metaheuristic methods currently in use Includes the necessary concepts to enable readers to implement and modify already known metaheuristic methods to solve problems Covers design aspects and implementation in MATLAB (R) Contains numerous examples of problems and solutions that demonstrate the power of these methods of optimization The material has been written from a teaching perspective and, for this reason, this book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of artificial intelligence, metaheuristic methods, and/or evolutionary computation. The objective is to bridge the gap between metaheuristic techniques and complex optimization problems that profit from the convenient properties of metaheuristic approaches. Therefore, engineer practitioners who are not familiar with metaheuristic computation will appreciate that the techniques discussed are beyond simple theoretical tools, since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise in such areas.

Metaheuristic algorithms are considered as generic optimization tools that can solve very complex problems characterized by having very large search spaces. Metaheuristic methods reduce the effective size of the search space through the use of effective search strategies. Book Features: Provides a unified view of the most popular metaheuristic methods currently in use Includes the necessary concepts to enable readers to implement and modify already known metaheuristic methods to solve problems Covers design aspects and implementation in MATLAB (R) Contains numerous examples of problems and solutions that demonstrate the power of these methods of optimization The material has been written from a teaching perspective and, for this reason, this book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of artificial intelligence, metaheuristic methods, and/or evolutionary computation. The objective is to bridge the gap between metaheuristic techniques and complex optimization problems that profit from the convenient properties of metaheuristic approaches. Therefore, engineer practitioners who are not familiar with metaheuristic computation will appreciate that the techniques discussed are beyond simple theoretical tools, since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise in such areas.

This book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Science, Electrical Engineering, or Computational Mathematics. Metaheuristic search methods are so numerous and varied in terms of design and potential applications; however, for such an abundant family of optimization techniques, there seems to be a question which needs to be answered: Which part of the design in a metaheuristic algorithm contributes more to its better performance? Several works that compare the performance among metaheuristic approaches have been reported in the literature. Nevertheless, they suffer from one of the following limitations: (A)Their conclusions are based on the performance of popular evolutionary approaches over a set of synthetic functions with exact solutions and well-known behaviors, without considering the application context or including recent developments. (B) Their conclusions consider only the comparison of their final results which cannot evaluate the nature of a good or bad balance between exploration and exploitation. The objective of this book is to compare the performance of various metaheuristic techniques when they are faced with complex optimization problems extracted from different engineering domains. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective.

This book includes two objectives. The first goal is to present advances and developments which have proved to be effective in their application to several complex problems. The second objective is to present the performance comparison of various metaheuristic techniques when they face complex optimization problems. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective. Most of the problems in science, engineering, economics, and other areas can be translated as an optimization or a search problem. According to their characteristics, some problems can be simple that can be solved by traditional optimization methods based on mathematical analysis. However, most of the problems of practical importance in engineering represent complex scenarios so that they are very hard to be solved by using traditional approaches. Under such circumstances, metaheuristic has emerged as the best alternative to solve this kind of complex formulations. This book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Engineers and application developers can also benefit from the book contents since it has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others, and therefore, only potential interesting information can be quickly available for solving an industrial problem at hand.

This book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Science, Electrical Engineering, or Computational Mathematics. Metaheuristic search methods are so numerous and varied in terms of design and potential applications; however, for such an abundant family of optimization techniques, there seems to be a question which needs to be answered: Which part of the design in a metaheuristic algorithm contributes more to its better performance? Several works that compare the performance among metaheuristic approaches have been reported in the literature. Nevertheless, they suffer from one of the following limitations: (A)Their conclusions are based on the performance of popular evolutionary approaches over a set of synthetic functions with exact solutions and well-known behaviors, without considering the application context or including recent developments. (B) Their conclusions consider only the comparison of their final results which cannot evaluate the nature of a good or bad balance between exploration and exploitation. The objective of this book is to compare the performance of various metaheuristic techniques when they are faced with complex optimization problems extracted from different engineering domains. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective.

This book includes two objectives. The first goal is to present advances and developments which have proved to be effective in their application to several complex problems. The second objective is to present the performance comparison of various metaheuristic techniques when they face complex optimization problems. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective. Most of the problems in science, engineering, economics, and other areas can be translated as an optimization or a search problem. According to their characteristics, some problems can be simple that can be solved by traditional optimization methods based on mathematical analysis. However, most of the problems of practical importance in engineering represent complex scenarios so that they are very hard to be solved by using traditional approaches. Under such circumstances, metaheuristic has emerged as the best alternative to solve this kind of complex formulations. This book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Engineers and application developers can also benefit from the book contents since it has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others, and therefore, only potential interesting information can be quickly available for solving an industrial problem at hand.

This book presents new, alternative metaheuristic developments that have proved to be effective in various complex problems to help researchers, lecturers, engineers, and practitioners solve their own optimization problems. It also bridges the gap between recent metaheuristic techniques and interesting identification system methods that benefit from the convenience of metaheuristic schemes by explaining basic ideas of the proposed applications in ways that can be understood by readers new to these fields. As such it is a valuable resource for energy practitioners who are not researchers in metaheuristics. In addition, it offers members of the metaheuristic community insights into how system identification and energy problems can be translated into optimization tasks.

This book presents new, alternative metaheuristic developments that have proved to be effective in various complex problems to help researchers, lecturers, engineers, and practitioners solve their own optimization problems. It also bridges the gap between recent metaheuristic techniques and interesting identification system methods that benefit from the convenience of metaheuristic schemes by explaining basic ideas of the proposed applications in ways that can be understood by readers new to these fields. As such it is a valuable resource for energy practitioners who are not researchers in metaheuristics. In addition, it offers members of the metaheuristic community insights into how system identification and energy problems can be translated into optimization tasks.

This book presents advances in alternative swarm development that have proved to be effective in several complex problems. Swarm intelligence (SI) is a problem-solving methodology that results from the cooperation between a set of agents with similar characteristics. The study of biological entities, such as animals and insects, manifesting social behavior has resulted in several computational models of swarm intelligence. While there are numerous books addressing the most widely known swarm methods, namely ant colony algorithms and particle swarm optimization, those discussing new alternative approaches are rare. The focus on developments based on the simple modification of popular swarm methods overlooks the opportunity to discover new techniques and procedures that can be useful in solving problems formulated by the academic and industrial communities. Presenting various novel swarm methods and their practical applications, the book helps researchers, lecturers, engineers and practitioners solve their own optimization problems.

This book discusses the use of efficient metaheuristic algorithms to solve diverse power system problems, providing an overview of the various aspects of metaheuristic methods to enable readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the field and of conducting studies on specific metaheuristic algorithms related to power-system applications. By bridging the gap between recent metaheuristic techniques and novel power system methods that benefit from the convenience of metaheuristic methods, it offers power system practitioners who are not metaheuristic computation researchers insights into the techniques, which go beyond simple theoretical tools and have been adapted to solve important problems that commonly arise. On the other hand, members of the metaheuristic computation community learn how power engineering problems can be translated into optimization tasks, and it is also of interest to engineers and application developers. Further, since each chapter can be read independently, the relevant information can be quickly found. Power systems is a multidisciplinary field that addresses the multiple approaches used for design and analysis in areas ranging from signal processing, and electronics to computational intelligence, including the current trend of metaheuristic computation.

This book presents a study of the use of optimization algorithms in complex image processing problems. The problems selected explore areas ranging from the theory of image segmentation to the detection of complex objects in medical images. Furthermore, the concepts of machine learning and optimization are analyzed to provide an overview of the application of these tools in image processing. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective. Accordingly, the book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Science, Engineering, and Computational Mathematics, and can be used for courses on Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Image Processing, Computational Intelligence, etc. Likewise, the material can be useful for research from the evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence and image processing communities.

This book compares the performance of various evolutionary computation (EC) techniques when they are faced with complex optimization problems extracted from different engineering domains. Particularly focusing on recently developed algorithms, it is designed so that each chapter can be read independently. Several comparisons among EC techniques have been reported in the literature, however, they all suffer from one limitation: their conclusions are based on the performance of popular evolutionary approaches over a set of synthetic functions with exact solutions and well-known behaviors, without considering the application context or including recent developments. In each chapter, a complex engineering optimization problem is posed, and then a particular EC technique is presented as the best choice, according to its search characteristics. Lastly, a set of experiments is conducted in order to compare its performance to other popular EC methods.

This book bridges the gap between Soft Computing techniques and their applications to complex engineering problems. In each chapter we endeavor to explain the basic ideas behind the proposed applications in an accessible format for readers who may not possess a background in some of the fields. Therefore, engineers or practitioners who are not familiar with Soft Computing methods will appreciate that the techniques discussed go beyond simple theoretical tools, since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise in such areas. At the same time, the book will show members of the Soft Computing community how engineering problems are now being solved and handled with the help of intelligent approaches. Highlighting new applications and implementations of Soft Computing approaches in various engineering contexts, the book is divided into 12 chapters. Further, it has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently of the others.

The goal of this book is to present advances that discuss alternative Evolutionary Computation (EC) developments and non-conventional operators which have proved to be effective in the solution of several complex problems. The book has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others. The book contains nine chapters with the following themes: 1) Introduction, 2) the Social Spider Optimization (SSO), 3) the States of Matter Search (SMS), 4) the collective animal behavior (CAB) algorithm, 5) the Allostatic Optimization (AO) method, 6) the Locust Search (LS) algorithm, 7) the Adaptive Population with Reduced Evaluations (APRE) method, 8) the multimodal CAB, 9) the constrained SSO method.

This book explores new alternative metaheuristic developments that have proved to be effective in their application to several complex problems. Though most of the new metaheuristic algorithms considered offer promising results, they are nevertheless still in their infancy. To grow and attain their full potential, new metaheuristic methods must be applied in a great variety of problems and contexts, so that they not only perform well in their reported sets of optimization problems, but also in new complex formulations. The only way to accomplish this is to disseminate these methods in various technical areas as optimization tools. In general, once a scientist, engineer or practitioner recognizes a problem as a particular instance of a more generic class, he/she can select one of several metaheuristic algorithms that guarantee an expected optimization performance. Unfortunately, the set of options are concentrated on algorithms whose popularity and high proliferation outstrip those of the new developments. This structure is important, because the authors recognize this methodology as the best way to help researchers, lecturers, engineers and practitioners solve their own optimization problems.

This book compares the performance of various evolutionary computation (EC) techniques when they are faced with complex optimization problems extracted from different engineering domains. Particularly focusing on recently developed algorithms, it is designed so that each chapter can be read independently. Several comparisons among EC techniques have been reported in the literature, however, they all suffer from one limitation: their conclusions are based on the performance of popular evolutionary approaches over a set of synthetic functions with exact solutions and well-known behaviors, without considering the application context or including recent developments. In each chapter, a complex engineering optimization problem is posed, and then a particular EC technique is presented as the best choice, according to its search characteristics. Lastly, a set of experiments is conducted in order to compare its performance to other popular EC methods.

This book presents a study of the use of optimization algorithms in complex image processing problems. The problems selected explore areas ranging from the theory of image segmentation to the detection of complex objects in medical images. Furthermore, the concepts of machine learning and optimization are analyzed to provide an overview of the application of these tools in image processing. The material has been compiled from a teaching perspective. Accordingly, the book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Science, Engineering, and Computational Mathematics, and can be used for courses on Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Image Processing, Computational Intelligence, etc. Likewise, the material can be useful for research from the evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence and image processing communities.

This book bridges the gap between Soft Computing techniques and their applications to complex engineering problems. In each chapter we endeavor to explain the basic ideas behind the proposed applications in an accessible format for readers who may not possess a background in some of the fields. Therefore, engineers or practitioners who are not familiar with Soft Computing methods will appreciate that the techniques discussed go beyond simple theoretical tools, since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise in such areas. At the same time, the book will show members of the Soft Computing community how engineering problems are now being solved and handled with the help of intelligent approaches. Highlighting new applications and implementations of Soft Computing approaches in various engineering contexts, the book is divided into 12 chapters. Further, it has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently of the others.

This book presents the use of efficient Evolutionary Computation (EC) algorithms for solving diverse real-world image processing and pattern recognition problems. It provides an overview of the different aspects of evolutionary methods in order to enable the reader in reaching a global understanding of the field and, in conducting studies on specific evolutionary techniques that are related to applications in image processing and pattern recognition. It explains the basic ideas of the proposed applications in a way that can also be understood by readers outside of the field. Image processing and pattern recognition practitioners who are not evolutionary computation researchers will appreciate the discussed techniques beyond simple theoretical tools since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise on such areas. On the other hand, members of the evolutionary computation community can learn the way in which image processing and pattern recognition problems can be translated into an optimization task. The book has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others. It can serve as reference book for students and researchers with basic knowledge in image processing and EC methods.

The goal of this book is to present advances that discuss alternative Evolutionary Computation (EC) developments and non-conventional operators which have proved to be effective in the solution of several complex problems. The book has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others. The book contains nine chapters with the following themes: 1) Introduction, 2) the Social Spider Optimization (SSO), 3) the States of Matter Search (SMS), 4) the collective animal behavior (CAB) algorithm, 5) the Allostatic Optimization (AO) method, 6) the Locust Search (LS) algorithm, 7) the Adaptive Population with Reduced Evaluations (APRE) method, 8) the multimodal CAB, 9) the constrained SSO method.

This book presents the use of efficient Evolutionary Computation (EC) algorithms for solving diverse real-world image processing and pattern recognition problems. It provides an overview of the different aspects of evolutionary methods in order to enable the reader in reaching a global understanding of the field and, in conducting studies on specific evolutionary techniques that are related to applications in image processing and pattern recognition. It explains the basic ideas of the proposed applications in a way that can also be understood by readers outside of the field. Image processing and pattern recognition practitioners who are not evolutionary computation researchers will appreciate the discussed techniques beyond simple theoretical tools since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise on such areas. On the other hand, members of the evolutionary computation community can learn the way in which image processing and pattern recognition problems can be translated into an optimization task. The book has been structured so that each chapter can be read independently from the others. It can serve as reference book for students and researchers with basic knowledge in image processing and EC methods.

This book presents a comparative perspective of current metaheuristic developments, which have proved to be effective in their application to several complex problems. The study of biological and social entities such as animals, humans, or insects that manifest a cooperative behavior has produced several computational models in metaheuristic methods. Although these schemes emulate very different processes or systems, the rules used to model individual behavior are very similar. Under such conditions, it is not clear to identify which are the advantages or disadvantages of each metaheuristic technique. The book is compiled from a teaching perspective. For this reason, the book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Science, Electrical Engineering, or Computational Mathematics. It is appropriate for courses such as Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, Evolutionary Computation. The book is also useful for researchers from the evolutionary and engineering communities. Likewise, engineer practitioners, who are not familiar with metaheuristic computation concepts, will appreciate that the techniques discussed are beyond simple theoretical tools since they have been adapted to solve significant problems that commonly arise in engineering areas.