María Cristina Riff

DVRP: a hard dynamic combinatorial optimisation problem tackled by an evolutionary hyper-heuristic

In this paper we propose and evaluate an evolutionary-based hyper-heuristic approach, called EH-DVRP, for solving hard instances of the dynamic vehicle routing problem. A hyper-heuristic is a high-level algorithm, which generates or chooses a set of low-level heuristics in a common framework, to solve the problem at hand. In our collaborative framework, we have included three different types of low-level heuristics: constructive, perturbative, and noise heuristics. Basically, the hyper-heuristic manages and evolves a sophisticated sequence of combinations of these low-level heuristics, which are sequentially applied in order to construct and improve partial solutions, i.e., partial routes. In presenting some design considerations, we have taken into account the allowance of a proper cooperation and communication among low-level heuristics, and as a result, find the most promising sequence to tackle partial states of the (dynamic) problem. Our approach has been evaluated using the Kilby’s benchmarks, which comprise a large number of instances with different topologies and degrees of dynamism, and we have compared it with some well-known methods proposed in the literature. The experimental results have shown that, due to the dynamic nature of the hyper-heuristic, our proposed approach is able to adapt to dynamic scenarios more naturally than low-level heuristics. Furthermore, the hyper-heuristic can obtain high-quality solutions when compared with other (meta) heuristic-based methods. Therefore, the findings of this contribution justify the employment of hyper-heuristic techniques in such changing environments, and we believe that further contributions could be successfully proposed in related dynamic problems.

Brief paper: A revision of recent approaches for two-dimensional strip-packing problems

In this paper, we present a review of the recent approaches proposed in the literature for strip-packing problems. Many of them have been concurrently published, given some similar results for the same set of benchmarks. Due to the quantity of published papers, it is difficult to ascertain the level of current research in this area.

Solving timetabling problems using a cultural algorithm

This paper addresses the solution of timetabling problems using cultural algorithms. The core idea is to extract problem domain information during the evolutionary search, and then combine it with some previously proposed operators, in order to improve performance. The proposed approach is validated using a benchmark of 20 instances, and its results are compared with respect to three other approaches: two evolutionary algorithms and simulated annealing, all of which have been previously adopted to solve timetabling problems.

A beginner's guide to tuning methods

Metaheuristic methods have been demonstrated to be efficient tools to solve hard optimization problems. Most metaheuristics define a set of parameters that must be tuned. A good setup of that parameter values can lead to take advantage of the metaheuristic capabilities to solve the problem at hand. Tuning strategies are step by step methods based on multiple runs of the metaheuristic algorithm. In this study we compare four automated tuning methods: F-Race, Revac, ParamILS and SPO. We evaluate the performance of each method using a standard genetic algorithm for continuous function optimization. We discuss about the requirements of each method, the resources used and quality of solutions found in different scenarios. Finally we establish some guidelines that can help to choose the more appropriate tuning procedure.

An Efficient Hyperheuristic for Strip-Packing Problems

In this paper we introduce a hyperheuristic to solve hard strip packing problems. The hyperheuristic manages a sequence of greedy low-level heuristics, each element of the sequence placing a given number of objects. A low-level solution is built by placing the objects following the sequence of low-level heuristics. The hyperheuristic performs a hill-climbing algorithm on this sequence by testing different moves (adding, removing, replacing a low-level heuristic). The results we obtained are very encouraging and improve the results from the single heuristics tests. Thus, we conclude that the collaboration among heuristics is an interesting approach to solve hard strip packing problems.

On-the-fly calibrating strategies for evolutionary algorithms

The issue of controlling values of various parameters of an evolutionary algorithm is one of the most important and interesting areas of research in evolutionary computation. In this paper we propose two new parameter control strategies for evolutionary algorithms based on the ideas of reinforcement learning. These strategies provide efficient and low-cost adaptive techniques for parameter control and they preserve the original design of the evolutionary algorithm, as they can be included without changing either the structure of the algorithm nor its operators design.

A beam search approach to the container loading problem

The single container loading problem is a three-dimensional packing problem in which a container has to be filled with a set of boxes. The objective is to maximize the space utilization of the container. This problem has wide applications in the logistics industry. In this work, a new constructive approach to this problem is introduced. The approach uses a beam search strategy. This strategy can be viewed as a variant of the branch-and-bound search that only expands the most promising nodes at each level of the search tree. The approach is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms using 16 well-known sets of benchmark instances. Results show that the new approach outperforms all the others for each set of instances.

A new algorithm for reducing metaheuristic design effort

The process of designing a metaheuristic is a difficult and time consuming task as it usually requires tuning to find the best associated parameter values. In this paper, we propose a simple tuning tool called EVOCA which allows unexperimented metaheuristic designers to obtain good quality results without have a strong knowledge in tuning methods. The simplicity here means that the designer does not have to care about the initial settings of the tuner. We apply EVOCA to a genetic algorithm that solves NK landscape instances of various categories. We show that EVOCA is able to tune both categorical and numerical parameters allowing the designer to discard ineffective components for the algorithm.

An evolutionary hyperheuristic to solve strip-packing problems

In this paper we introduce an evolutionary hyperheuristic approach to solve difficult strip packing problems. We have designed a genetic based hyperheuristic using the most recently proposed low-level heuristics in the literature. Two versions for tuning parameters have also been evaluated. The results obtained are very encouraging showing that our approach outperforms the single heuristics and others well-known techniques.

A Cooperative Framework Based on Local Search and Constraint Programming for Solving Discrete Global Optimisation

Our research has been focused on developing cooperation techniques for solving large scale combinatorial optimisation problems using Constraint Programming with Local Search. In this paper, we introduce a framework for designing cooperative strategies. It is inspired from recent research carried out by the Constraint Programming community. For the tests that we present in this work we have selected two well known techniques: Forward Checking and Iterative Improvement. The set of benchmarks for the Capacity Vehicle Routing Problem shows the advantages to use this framework.