Popular Evolutionary Computation Algorithms

This chapter introduces several popular EAs, including the four classical paradigms of GA, GP, EP, and ES and also including the emerging mainstream of PSO, DE, EDA, and ACO. GA, GP, PSO, and DE generate offsprings mainly by means of recombining individuals, while EP, ES, EDA, and ACO use specific probability distribution models to generate offsprings. ES, EP, DE, and PSO are mainly used to solve continuous optimization problems, while EDA and ACO are proposed to solve combinatorial optimization problems. However, GA can solve both types of optimization problems by using different solution representations.