An Ensemble Framework of Evolutionary Algorithm for Constrained Multi-Objective Optimization

Abstract

In the real-world, symmetry or asymmetry widely exists in various problems. Some of them can be formulated as constrained multi-objective optimization problems (CMOPs). During the past few years, handling CMOPs by evolutionary algorithms has become more popular. Lots of constrained multi-objective optimization evolutionary algorithms (CMOEAs) have been proposed. Whereas different CMOEAs may be more suitable for different CMOPs, it is difficult to choose the best one for a CMOP at hand. In this paper, we propose an ensemble framework of CMOEAs that aims to achieve better versatility on handling diverse CMOPs. In the proposed framework, the hypervolume indicator is used to evaluate the performance of CMOEAs, and a decreasing mechanism is devised to delete the poorly performed CMOEAs and to gradually determine the most suitable CMOEA. A new CMOEA, namely ECMOEA, is developed based on the framework and three state-of-the-art CMOEAs. Experimental results on five benchmarks with totally 52 instances demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. In addition, the superiority of ECMOEA is verified through comparisons to seven state-of-the-art CMOEAs. Moreover, the effectiveness of ECMOEA on the real-world problems is also evaluated for eight instances.