4,924 research outputs found
Generalized decomposition and cross entropy methods for many-objective optimization
Decomposition-based algorithms for multi-objective
optimization problems have increased in popularity in the past decade. Although their convergence to the Pareto optimal front (PF) is in several instances superior to that of Pareto-based algorithms, the problem of selecting a way to distribute or guide these solutions in a high-dimensional space has not been explored. In this work, we introduce a novel concept which we call generalized
decomposition. Generalized decomposition provides a framework with which the decision maker (DM) can guide the underlying evolutionary algorithm toward specific regions of interest or the entire Pareto front with the desired distribution of Pareto optimal solutions. Additionally, it is shown that generalized decomposition simplifies many-objective problems by unifying the three performance objectives of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms – convergence to the PF, evenly distributed Pareto
optimal solutions and coverage of the entire front – to only one, that of convergence. A framework, established on generalized decomposition, and an estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) based on low-order statistics, namely the cross-entropy method (CE), is created to illustrate the benefits of the proposed concept for many objective problems. This choice of EDA also enables
the test of the hypothesis that low-order statistics based EDAs can have comparable performance to more elaborate EDAs
Robust Mission Design Through Evidence Theory and Multi-Agent Collaborative Search
In this paper, the preliminary design of a space mission is approached
introducing uncertainties on the design parameters and formulating the
resulting reliable design problem as a multiobjective optimization problem.
Uncertainties are modelled through evidence theory and the belief, or
credibility, in the successful achievement of mission goals is maximised along
with the reliability of constraint satisfaction. The multiobjective
optimisation problem is solved through a novel algorithm based on the
collaboration of a population of agents in search for the set of highly
reliable solutions. Two typical problems in mission analysis are used to
illustrate the proposed methodology
Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization Driven by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Recently, increasing works have proposed to drive evolutionary algorithms
using machine learning models. Usually, the performance of such model based
evolutionary algorithms is highly dependent on the training qualities of the
adopted models. Since it usually requires a certain amount of data (i.e. the
candidate solutions generated by the algorithms) for model training, the
performance deteriorates rapidly with the increase of the problem scales, due
to the curse of dimensionality. To address this issue, we propose a
multi-objective evolutionary algorithm driven by the generative adversarial
networks (GANs). At each generation of the proposed algorithm, the parent
solutions are first classified into real and fake samples to train the GANs;
then the offspring solutions are sampled by the trained GANs. Thanks to the
powerful generative ability of the GANs, our proposed algorithm is capable of
generating promising offspring solutions in high-dimensional decision space
with limited training data. The proposed algorithm is tested on 10 benchmark
problems with up to 200 decision variables. Experimental results on these test
problems demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm
Efficient Computation of Expected Hypervolume Improvement Using Box Decomposition Algorithms
In the field of multi-objective optimization algorithms, multi-objective
Bayesian Global Optimization (MOBGO) is an important branch, in addition to
evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithms (EMOAs). MOBGO utilizes
Gaussian Process models learned from previous objective function evaluations to
decide the next evaluation site by maximizing or minimizing an infill
criterion. A common criterion in MOBGO is the Expected Hypervolume Improvement
(EHVI), which shows a good performance on a wide range of problems, with
respect to exploration and exploitation. However, so far it has been a
challenge to calculate exact EHVI values efficiently. In this paper, an
efficient algorithm for the computation of the exact EHVI for a generic case is
proposed. This efficient algorithm is based on partitioning the integration
volume into a set of axis-parallel slices. Theoretically, the upper bound time
complexities are improved from previously and , for two- and
three-objective problems respectively, to , which is
asymptotically optimal. This article generalizes the scheme in higher
dimensional case by utilizing a new hyperbox decomposition technique, which was
proposed by D{\"a}chert et al, EJOR, 2017. It also utilizes a generalization of
the multilayered integration scheme that scales linearly in the number of
hyperboxes of the decomposition. The speed comparison shows that the proposed
algorithm in this paper significantly reduces computation time. Finally, this
decomposition technique is applied in the calculation of the Probability of
Improvement (PoI)
DeepSQLi: Deep Semantic Learning for Testing SQL Injection
Security is unarguably the most serious concern for Web applications, to
which SQL injection (SQLi) attack is one of the most devastating attacks.
Automatically testing SQLi vulnerabilities is of ultimate importance, yet is
unfortunately far from trivial to implement. This is because the existence of a
huge, or potentially infinite, number of variants and semantic possibilities of
SQL leading to SQLi attacks on various Web applications. In this paper, we
propose a deep natural language processing based tool, dubbed DeepSQLi, to
generate test cases for detecting SQLi vulnerabilities. Through adopting deep
learning based neural language model and sequence of words prediction, DeepSQLi
is equipped with the ability to learn the semantic knowledge embedded in SQLi
attacks, allowing it to translate user inputs (or a test case) into a new test
case, which is semantically related and potentially more sophisticated.
Experiments are conducted to compare DeepSQLi with SQLmap, a state-of-the-art
SQLi testing automation tool, on six real-world Web applications that are of
different scales, characteristics and domains. Empirical results demonstrate
the effectiveness and the remarkable superiority of DeepSQLi over SQLmap, such
that more SQLi vulnerabilities can be identified by using a less number of test
cases, whilst running much faster
Which Surrogate Works for Empirical Performance Modelling? A Case Study with Differential Evolution
It is not uncommon that meta-heuristic algorithms contain some intrinsic
parameters, the optimal configuration of which is crucial for achieving their
peak performance. However, evaluating the effectiveness of a configuration is
expensive, as it involves many costly runs of the target algorithm. Perhaps
surprisingly, it is possible to build a cheap-to-evaluate surrogate that models
the algorithm's empirical performance as a function of its parameters. Such
surrogates constitute an important building block for understanding algorithm
performance, algorithm portfolio/selection, and the automatic algorithm
configuration. In principle, many off-the-shelf machine learning techniques can
be used to build surrogates. In this paper, we take the differential evolution
(DE) as the baseline algorithm for proof-of-concept study. Regression models
are trained to model the DE's empirical performance given a parameter
configuration. In particular, we evaluate and compare four popular regression
algorithms both in terms of how well they predict the empirical performance
with respect to a particular parameter configuration, and also how well they
approximate the parameter versus the empirical performance landscapes
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