Mechanism of multi-objective genetic algorithm for maintaining the solution diversity using neural network

Abstract

When multi-objective genetic algorithms are applied to real-world problems for deriving Pareto-optimal solutions, the high calculation cost becomes a problem. One solution to this problem is to use a small population size. However, this often results in loss of diversity of the solutions, and therefore solutions with sufficient precision cannot be derived. To overcome this difficulty, the solutions should be replaced when they have converged on a certain point. To perform this replacement, inverse analysis is required to derive the design variables from objects as the solutions are located in the objective space. For this purpose, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is applied. Using ANN, the solutions concentrating on certain points are replaced and the diversity of the solutions is maintained. In this paper, a new mechanism using ANN to maintain the diversity of the solutions is proposed. The proposed mechanism was introduced into NSGA-II and applied to test functions. In some functions, the proposed mechanism was useful compared to the conventional method. In other numerical experiments, the results of the proposed algorithm with large populations are discussed and the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is also described. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.