This article analyzes the stochastic runtime of a Cross-Entropy Algorithm on two classes of traveling salesman problems. The algorithm shares main features of the famous Max-Min Ant System with iteration-best reinforcement. For simple instances that have a $\{1,n\}$-valued distance function and a unique optimal solution, we prove a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{6+\epsilon})$ with the vertex-based random solution generation, and a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{3+\epsilon}\ln n)$ with the edge-based random solution generation for an arbitrary $\epsilon\in (0,1)$. These runtimes are very close to the known expected runtime for variants of Max-Min Ant System with best-so-far reinforcement. They are obtained for the stronger notion of stochastic runtime, which means that an optimal solution is obtained in that time with an overwhelming probability, i.e., a probability tending exponentially fast to one with growing problem size. We also inspect more complex instances with $n$ vertices positioned on an $m\times m$ grid. When the $n$ vertices span a convex polygon, we obtain a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{3}m^{5+\epsilon})$ with the vertex-based random solution generation, and a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{2}m^{5+\epsilon})$ for the edge-based random solution generation. When there are $k = O(1)$ many vertices inside a convex polygon spanned by the other $n-k$ vertices, we obtain a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{4}m^{5+\epsilon}+n^{6k-1}m^{\epsilon})$ with the vertex-based random solution generation, and a stochastic runtime of $O(n^{3}m^{5+\epsilon}+n^{3k}m^{\epsilon})$ with the edge-based random solution generation. These runtimes are better than the expected runtime for the so-called $(\mu\!+\!\lambda)$ EA reported in a recent article, and again obtained for the stronger notion of stochastic runtime.

Critical node problems involve identifying a subset of critical nodes from an undirected graph whose removal results in optimizing a pre-defined measure over the residual graph. As useful models for a variety of practical applications, these problems are computational challenging. In this paper, we study the classic critical node problem (CNP) and introduce an effective memetic algorithm for solving CNP. The proposed algorithm combines a double backbone-based crossover operator (to generate promising offspring solutions), a component-based neighborhood search procedure (to find high-quality local optima) and a rank-based pool updating strategy (to guarantee a healthy population). Specially, the component-based neighborhood search integrates two key techniques, i.e., two-phase node exchange strategy and node weighting scheme. The double backbone-based crossover extends the idea of general backbone-based crossovers. Extensive evaluations on 42 synthetic and real-world benchmark instances show that the proposed algorithm discovers 21 new upper bounds and matches 18 previous best-known upper bounds. We also demonstrate the relevance of our algorithm for effectively solving a variant of the classic CNP, called the cardinality-constrained critical node problem. Finally, we investigate the usefulness of each key algorithmic component.

Deep neural networks continue to show improved performance with increasing depth, an encouraging trend that implies an explosion in the possible permutations of network architectures and hyperparameters for which there is little intuitive guidance. To address this increasing complexity, we propose Evolutionary DEep Networks (EDEN), a computationally efficient neuro-evolutionary algorithm which interfaces to any deep neural network platform, such as TensorFlow. We show that EDEN evolves simple yet successful architectures built from embedding, 1D and 2D convolutional, max pooling and fully connected layers along with their hyperparameters. Evaluation of EDEN across seven image and sentiment classification datasets shows that it reliably finds good networks -- and in three cases achieves state-of-the-art results -- even on a single GPU, in just 6-24 hours. Our study provides a first attempt at applying neuro-evolution to the creation of 1D convolutional networks for sentiment analysis including the optimisation of the embedding layer.

The purpose of this paper is to build a Regression Model for the Concrete Strengthening Process. The description of the process and the data set can be found in the following link: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Concrete Compressive Strength This is a free and a complex dataset available from the Machine Learning Repository of Centre of Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems at University of California Irvine Concrete is the most important material in civil engineering. The concrete compressive strength is a highly nonlinear function of age and ingredients. These ingredients include cement, blast furnace slag, fly ash, water, superplasticizer, coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and age.

We explore the use of Evolution Strategies (ES), a class of black box optimization algorithms, as an alternative to popular MDP-based RL techniques such as Q-learning and Policy Gradients. Experiments on MuJoCo and Atari show that ES is a viable solution strategy that scales extremely well with the number of CPUs available: By using a novel communication strategy based on common random numbers, our ES implementation only needs to communicate scalars, making it possible to scale to over a thousand parallel workers. This allows us to solve 3D humanoid walking in 10 minutes and obtain competitive results on most Atari games after one hour of training. In addition, we highlight several advantages of ES as a black box optimization technique: it is invariant to action frequency and delayed rewards, tolerant of extremely long horizons, and does not need temporal discounting or value function approximation.

Robotics and Automation deals with manufacture and applications of robots and computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information technology to reduce the need for human work. The journal provides an Open Access platform to publish the latest contributions in the field of robotics, automation technologies, robotic surgery, intelligent robotics, mechatronics, and biomimetics novel and biologically-inspired robotics, modelling, identification and control of robotic systems, biomedical, rehabilitation and surgical robotics, exoskeletons, prosthetics and artificial organs, AI, neural networks and fuzzy logic in robotics etc. This top best scholarly journal is using Editorial Manager System for online manuscript submission, review and tracking. Editorial board members of the Robotics & Automation or outside experts review manuscripts; at least two independent reviewer's approval followed by the editor is required for the acceptance of any citable manuscript. The journal includes a wide range of fields in its discipline to create a platform for the authors to make their contribution towards the journal and the editorial office promises a peer review process for the submitted manuscripts for the quality of publishing.

I was stuck up with a problem of multi class classification on which I am bound to use an evolutionary algorithm. As far as I know these are optimization algorithms. I could find out that genetic algorithms have been used to evolve a set of weights/rules for classification models. Is there a way in which I can involve EAs in the classification process?

In this article, I am going to explain the concept of genetic algorithm. First, I am going to present its origin and its goal. Then I am going to show you how to implement it with a short python tutorial. The naive solution is to create an "empirical algorithm" which is a set of rules: "if you meet this conditions, act like that". I could imagine that with enough rules like this we could reproduce natural intelligence.

As a researcher on Computer Vision, I come across new blogs and tutorials on ML (Machine Learning) every day. However, most of them are just focussing on introducing the syntax and the terminology relavant to the field. While people are able to copy paste and run the code in these tutorials and feel that working in ML is really not that hard, it doesn't help them at all in using ML for their own purposes. For example, they never introduce you to how you can run the same algorithm on your own dataset. Or, how do you get the dataset if you want to solve a problem.

This is part of a project I've been working in that involves using ML techniques to robot control. The first one is applying evolutionary algorithms to a neural controller. You cna find a Jupyter Notebook on the linked repository.