In evolutionary multiobjective optimization, maintaining a good balance between convergence and diversity is particularly crucial to the performance of the evolutionary algorithms (EAs). In addition, it becomes increasingly important to incorporate user preferences because it will be less likely to achieve a representative subset of the Pareto-optimal solutions using a limited population size as the number of objectives increases. This paper proposes a reference vector-guided EA for many-objective optimization. The reference vectors can be used not only to decompose the original multiobjective optimization problem into a number of single-objective subproblems, but also to elucidate user preferences to target a preferred subset of the whole Pareto front (PF). In the proposed algorithm, a scalarization approach, termed angle-penalized distance, is adopted to balance convergence and diversity of the solutions in the high-dimensional objective space. An adaptation strategy is proposed to dynamically adjust the distribution of the reference vectors according to the scales of the objective functions. Our experimental results on a variety of benchmark test problems show that the proposed algorithm is highly competitive in comparison with five state-of-the-art EAs for many-objective optimization. In addition, we show that reference vectors are effective and cost-efficient for preference articulation, which is particularly desirable for many-objective optimization. Furthermore, a reference vector regeneration strategy is proposed for handling irregular PFs. Finally, the proposed algorithm is extended for solving constrained many-objective optimization problems.

A Reference Vector Guided Evolutionary Algorithm for Many-Objective Optimization

Over the last three decades, a large number of evolutionary algorithms have been developed for solving multi-objective optimization problems. However, there lacks an upto-date and comprehensive software platform for researchers to properly benchmark existing algorithms and for practitioners to apply selected algorithms to solve their real-world problems. The demand of such a common tool becomes even more urgent, when the source code of many proposed algorithms has not been made publicly available. To address these issues, we have developed a MATLAB platform for evolutionary multi-objective optimization in this paper, called PlatEMO, which includes more than 50 multiobjective evolutionary algorithms and more than 100 multi-objective test problems, along with several widely used performance indicators. With a user-friendly graphical user interface, PlatEMO enables users to easily compare several evolutionary algorithms at one time and collect statistical results in Excel or LaTeX files. More importantly, PlatEMO is completely open source, such that users are able to develop new algorithms on the basis of it. This paper introduces the main features of PlatEMO and illustrates how to use it for performing comparative experiments, embedding new algorithms, creating new test problems, and developing performance indicators. Source code of PlatEMO is now available at: http://bimk.ahu.edu.cn/index.php?s=/Index/Software/index.html.

PlatEMO: A MATLAB Platform for Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization [Educational Forum]

Over the last three decades, a large number of evolutionary algorithms have been developed for solving multiobjective
optimization problems. However, there lacks an up-to-date and comprehensive software platform for
researchers to properly benchmark existing algorithms and for practitioners to apply selected algorithms to solve
their real-world problems. The demand of such a common tool becomes even more urgent, when the source code
of many proposed algorithms has not been made publicly available. To address these issues, we have developed
a MATLAB platform for evolutionary multi-objective optimization in this paper, called PlatEMO, which includes
more than 50 multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and more than 100 multi-objective test problems, along with
several widely used performance indicators. With a user-friendly graphical user interface, PlatEMO enables users
to easily compare several evolutionary algorithms at one time and collect statistical results in Excel or LaTeX files.
More importantly, PlatEMO is completely open source, such that users are able to develop new algorithms on the
basis of it. This paper introduces the main features of PlatEMO and illustrates how to use it for performing comparative
experiments, embedding new algorithms, creating new test problems, and developing performance indicators.
Source code of PlatEMO is now available at: http://bimk.ahu.edu.cn/index.php?s=/Index/Software/index.html.

PlatEMO: A MATLAB Platform for Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization

Python has become the programming language of choice for research and industry projects related to data science, machine learning, and deep learning. Since optimization is an inherent part of these research fields, more optimization related frameworks have arisen in the past few years. Only a few of them support optimization of multiple conflicting objectives at a time, but do not provide comprehensive tools for a complete multi-objective optimization task. To address this issue, we have developed pymoo, a multi-objective optimization framework in Python. We provide a guide to getting started with our framework by demonstrating the implementation of an exemplary constrained multi-objective optimization scenario. Moreover, we give a high-level overview of the architecture of pymoo to show its capabilities followed by an explanation of each module and its corresponding sub-modules. The implementations in our framework are customizable and algorithms can be modified/extended by supplying custom operators. Moreover, a variety of single, multi- and many-objective test problems are provided and gradients can be retrieved by automatic differentiation out of the box. Also, pymoo addresses practical needs, such as the parallelization of function evaluations, methods to visualize low and high-dimensional spaces, and tools for multi-criteria decision making. For more information about pymoo, readers are encouraged to visit: https://pymoo.org.

Pymoo: Multi-Objective Optimization in Python

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have shown to be promising in solving many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs), where the performance of these algorithms heavily depends on whether solutions that can accelerate convergence toward the Pareto front and maintaining a high degree of diversity will be selected from a set of nondominated solutions. In this paper, we propose a knee point-driven EA to solve MaOPs. Our basic idea is that knee points are naturally most preferred among nondominated solutions if no explicit user preferences are given. A bias toward the knee points in the nondominated solutions in the current population is shown to be an approximation of a bias toward a large hypervolume, thereby enhancing the convergence performance in many-objective optimization. In addition, as at most one solution will be identified as a knee point inside the neighborhood of each solution in the nondominated front, no additional diversity maintenance mechanisms need to be introduced in the proposed algorithm, considerably reducing the computational complexity compared to many existing multiobjective EAs for many-objective optimization. Experimental results on 16 test problems demonstrate the competitiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of both solution quality and computational efficiency.

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A Knee Point-Driven Evolutionary Algorithm for Many-Objective Optimization

During the past two decades, a variety of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) have been proposed in the literature. As pointed out in some recent studies, however, the performance of an MOEA can strongly depend on the Pareto front shape of the problem to be solved, whereas most existing MOEAs show poor versatility on problems with different shapes of Pareto fronts. To address this issue, we propose an MOEA based on an enhanced inverted generational distance indicator, in which an adaptation method is suggested to adjust a set of reference points based on the indicator contributions of candidate solutions in an external archive. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is versatile for solving problems with various types of Pareto fronts, outperforming several state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms for multiobjective and many-objective optimization.

An Indicator-Based Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm With Reference Point Adaptation for Better Versatility

Evolutionary algorithms have been shown to be powerful for solving multiobjective optimization problems, in which nondominated sorting is a widely adopted technique in selection. This technique, however, can be computationally expensive, especially when the number of individuals in the population becomes large. This is mainly because in most existing nondominated sorting algorithms, a solution needs to be compared with all other solutions before it can be assigned to a front. In this paper we propose a novel, computationally efficient approach to nondominated sorting, termed efficient nondominated sort (ENS). In ENS, a solution to be assigned to a front needs to be compared only with those that have already been assigned to a front, thereby avoiding many unnecessary dominance comparisons. Based on this new approach, two nondominated sorting algorithms have been suggested. Both theoretical analysis and empirical results show that the ENS-based sorting algorithms are computationally more efficient than the state-of-the-art nondominated sorting methods.

Ye Tian

Papers

PlatEMO: A MATLAB Platform for Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization [Educational Forum]

PlatEMO: A MATLAB Platform for Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization

A Knee Point-Driven Evolutionary Algorithm for Many-Objective Optimization

An Indicator-Based Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm With Reference Point Adaptation for Better Versatility

An Efficient Approach to Nondominated Sorting for Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization