This edited volume is targeted at presenting the latest state-of-the-art methodologies in "Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms". The chapters deal with the theoretical and methodological aspects, as well as various applications to many real world problems from science, technology, business or commerce. Overall, the book has 14 chapters including an introductory chapter giving the fundamental definitions and some important research challenges. The contributions were selected on the basis of fundamental ideas/concepts rather than the thoroughness of techniques deployed.

This edited volume is targeted at presenting the latest state-of-the-art methodologies in "Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms". The chapters deal with the theoretical and methodological aspects, as well as various applications to many real world problems from science, technology, business or commerce. Overall, the book has 14 chapters including an introductory chapter giving the fundamental definitions and some important research challenges. The contributions were selected on the basis of fundamental ideas/concepts rather than the thoroughness of techniques deployed.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are population-based, stochastic search algorithms that mimic natural evolution. Due to their ability to find excellent solutions for conventionally hard and dynamic problems within acceptable time, EAs have attracted interest from many researchers and practitioners in recent years. This book “Variants of Evolutionary Algorithms for Real-World Applications” aims to promote the practitioner’s view on EAs by providing a comprehensive discussion of how EAs can be adapted to the requirements of various applications in the real-world domains. It comprises 14 chapters, including an introductory chapter re-visiting the fundamental question of what an EA is and other chapters addressing a range of real-world problems such as production process planning, inventory system and supply chain network optimisation, task-based jobs assignment, planning for CNC-based work piece construction, mechanical/ship design tasks that involve runtime-intense simulations, data mining for the prediction of soil properties, automated tissue classification for MRI images, and database query optimisation, among others. These chapters demonstrate how different types of problems can be successfully solved using variants of EAs and how the solution approaches are constructed, in a way that can be understood and reproduced with little prior knowledge on optimisation.

The second edition of this book provides a comprehensive introduction to a consortium of technologies underlying soft computing, an evolving branch of computational intelligence, which in recent years, has turned synonymous to it. The constituent technologies discussed comprise neural network (NN), fuzzy system (FS), evolutionary algorithm (EA), and a number of hybrid systems, which include classes such as neuro-fuzzy, evolutionary-fuzzy, and neuro-evolutionary systems. The hybridization of the technologies is demonstrated on architectures such as fuzzy backpropagation network (NN-FS hybrid), genetic algorithm-based backpropagation network (NN-EA hybrid), simplified fuzzy ARTMAP (NN-FS hybrid), fuzzy associative memory (NN-FS hybrid), fuzzy logic controlled genetic algorithm (EA-FS hybrid) and evolutionary extreme learning machine (NN-EA hybrid) Every architecture has been discussed in detail through illustrative examples and applications. The algorithms have been presented in pseudo-code with a step-by-step illustration of the same in problems. The applications, demonstrative of the potential of the architectures, have been chosen from diverse disciplines of science and engineering. This book, with a wealth of information that is clearly presented and illustrated by many examples and applications, is designed for use as a text for the courses in soft computing at both the senior undergraduate and first-year postgraduate levels of computer science and engineering. It should also be of interest to researchers and technologists desirous of applying soft computing technologies to their respective fields of work.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) are powerful search and optimisation techniques inspired by the mechanisms of natural evolution. They imitate, on an abstract level, biological principles such as a population based approach, the inheritance of information, the variation of information via crossover/mutation, and the selection of individuals based on fitness. The most well-known class of EA are Genetic Algorithms (GA), which have received much attention not only in the scientific community lately. Other variants of EA, in particular Genetic Programming, Evolution Strategies, and Evolutionary Programming are less popular, though very powerful too. Traditionally, most practical applications of EA have appeared in the technical sector. Management problems, for a long time, have been a rather neglected field of EA-research. This is surprising, since the great potential of evolutionary approaches for the business and economics domain was recognised in pioneering publications quite a while ago. John Holland, for instance, in his seminal book Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (The University of Michigan Press, 1975) identified economics as one of the prime targets for a theory of adaptation, as formalised in his reproductive plans (later called Genetic Algorithms).

Through expanded intelligence, the use of robotics has fundamentally transformed the business industry. Providing successful techniques in robotic design allows for increased autonomous mobility, which leads to a greater productivity and production level. Rapid Automation: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides innovative insights into the state-of-the-art technologies in the design and development of robotics and their real-world applications in business processes. Highlighting a range of topics such as workflow automation tools, human-computer interaction, and swarm robotics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for computer engineers, business managers, robotic developers, business and IT professionals, academicians, and researchers.