This introduction to the field of hyper-heuristics presents the required foundations and tools and illustrates some of their applications. The authors organized the 13 chapters into three parts. The first, hyper-heuristic fundamentals and theory, provides an overview of selection constructive, selection perturbative, generation constructive and generation perturbative hyper-heuristics, and then a formal definition of hyper-heuristics. The chapters in the second part of the book examine applications of hyper-heuristics in vehicle routing, nurse rostering, packing and examination timetabling. The third part of the book presents advanced topics and then a summary of the field and future research directions. Finally the appendices offer details of the HyFlex framework and the EvoHyp toolkit, and then the definition, problem model and constraints for the most tested combinatorial optimization problems. The book will be of value to graduate students, researchers, and practitioners.

This book presents recent advances in automated machine learning (AutoML) and automated algorithm design and indicates the future directions in this fast-developing area. Methods have been developed to automate the design of neural networks, heuristics and metaheuristics using techniques such as metaheuristics, statistical techniques, machine learning and hyper-heuristics. The book first defines the field of automated design, distinguishing it from the similar but different topics of automated algorithm configuration and automated algorithm selection. The chapters report on the current state of the art by experts in the field and include reviews of AutoML and automated design of search, theoretical analyses of automated algorithm design, automated design of control software for robot swarms, and overfitting as a benchmark and design tool. Also covered are automated generation of constructive and perturbative low-level heuristics, selection hyper-heuristics for automated design, automated design of deep-learning approaches using hyper-heuristics, genetic programming hyper-heuristics with transfer knowledge and automated design of classification algorithms. The book concludes by examining future research directions of this rapidly evolving field. The information presented here will especially interest researchers and practitioners in the fields of artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, evolutionary computation and optimisation.

This introduction to the field of hyper-heuristics presents the required foundations and tools and illustrates some of their applications. The authors organized the 13 chapters into three parts. The first, hyper-heuristic fundamentals and theory, provides an overview of selection constructive, selection perturbative, generation constructive and generation perturbative hyper-heuristics, and then a formal definition of hyper-heuristics. The chapters in the second part of the book examine applications of hyper-heuristics in vehicle routing, nurse rostering, packing and examination timetabling. The third part of the book presents advanced topics and then a summary of the field and future research directions. Finally the appendices offer details of the HyFlex framework and the EvoHyp toolkit, and then the definition, problem model and constraints for the most tested combinatorial optimization problems. The book will be of value to graduate students, researchers, and practitioners.

This book presents recent advances in automated machine learning (AutoML) and automated algorithm design and indicates the future directions in this fast-developing area. Methods have been developed to automate the design of neural networks, heuristics and metaheuristics using techniques such as metaheuristics, statistical techniques, machine learning and hyper-heuristics. The book first defines the field of automated design, distinguishing it from the similar but different topics of automated algorithm configuration and automated algorithm selection. The chapters report on the current state of the art by experts in the field and include reviews of AutoML and automated design of search, theoretical analyses of automated algorithm design, automated design of control software for robot swarms, and overfitting as a benchmark and design tool. Also covered are automated generation of constructive and perturbative low-level heuristics, selection hyper-heuristics for automated design, automated design of deep-learning approaches using hyper-heuristics, genetic programming hyper-heuristics with transfer knowledge and automated design of classification algorithms. The book concludes by examining future research directions of this rapidly evolving field. The information presented here will especially interest researchers and practitioners in the fields of artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, evolutionary computation and optimisation.

World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC) is organized to discuss the state-of-the-art as well as to address various issues with respect to Nurturing Intelligent Computing Towards Advancement of Machine Intelligence. This Volume contains the papers presented in the Seventh World Congress (NaBIC'15) held in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa during December 01-03, 2015. The 39 papers presented in this Volume were carefully reviewed and selected. The Volume would be a valuable reference to researchers, students and practitioners in the computational intelligence field.