EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION

Evolutionary computation techniques have received a lot of attention r egarding their potential as optimization techniques for complex real-w orld problems. These techniques, based on the powerful principle of '' survival of the fittest'', model some natural phenomena of genetic inh eritance and Darwinian strife for survival; they also constitute an in teresting category of modern heuristic search. This introductory artic le presents the main paradigms of evolutionary algorithms (genetic alg orithms, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, genetic progr amming) as well as other (hybrid) methods of evolutionary computation. Two particular research directions (parallel evolutionary techniques and self-adaptation) are discussed further in the last part of this pa per.