A Survey of Constraint Handling Techniques in Evolutionary Computation Methods
Zbigniew Michalewicz · The MIT Press eBooks · 1995
One of the major components of any evolutionary system is the evaluation function. Evaluation functions are used to assign a quality measure for individuals in a population. Whereas evolutionary computation techniques assume the existence of an (efficient) evaluation function for feasible individuals, there is no uniform methodology for handling (i.e., evaluating) unfeasible ones. The simplest approach, incorporated by evolution strategies and a version of evolutionary programming (for numerical optimization problems), is to reject unfeasible solutions. But several other methods for handling unfeasible individuals have emerged recently. This paper reviews such methods (using a domain of nonlinear programming problems) and discusses their merits and drawbacks. 1 INTRODUCTION Evolutionary computation techniques have received considerable attention regarding their potential as optimization techniques for complex functions. Many difficult functions have been examined; often they served a...