Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Crowding is a technique used in genetic algorithms to preserve diversity in the population and to prevent premature convergence to local optima. It consists of pairing each offspring with a similar individual in the current population (pairing phase) and deciding which of the two will remain in the population (replacement phase). The present work focuses on the replacement phase of crowding, which usually has been carried out by one of the following three approaches: Deterministic, Probabilistic, and Simulated Annealing. These approaches present some limitations regarding the way replacement is conducted. On the one hand, the first two apply the same …