Crowding under diverse distance criteria for niche formation in multimodal optimization

Abstract

Niche formation allows evolutionary algorithms to be used when the location and maintenance of multiple solutions appertaining to diverse areas of the phenotypic space is required. Consequently the application field can be extended to multiobjective optimization, simulation of complex systems and multimodal function optimization. In this later case a conventional evolutionary algorithm tends to group the final population around the fittest individual. Thus, other areas of interest in the search process are lost. Niching methods permits the maintenance of solutions located around these areas of interest. This contribution briefly describe problems preventing niche formation in conventional genetic algorithms, a crowding method for niche formation and analysis of results when optimizing two multimodal functions.