Memetic Algorithms for Dynamic Optimization Problems

Dynamic optimization problems challenge traditional evolutionary algorithms seriously since they, once converged, cannot adapt quickly to environmental changes. This chapter investigates the application of memetic algorithms, a class of hybrid evolutionary algorithms, for dynamic optimization problems. An adaptive hill climbing method is proposed as the local search technique in the framework of memetic algorithms, which combines the features of greedy crossover-based hill climbing and steepest mutation-based hill climbing. In order to address the convergence problem, a new immigrants scheme, where the immigrant individuals can be generated from mutating an elite individual adaptively, is also introduced into the proposed memetic algorithm for dynamic optimization problems. Based on a series of dynamic problems generated from several stationary benchmark problems, experiments are carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed memetic algorithm in comparison with some peer algorithms. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed memetic algorithm in dynamic environments.