A Bayesian approach to constrained single- and multi-objective optimization

This article addresses the problem of derivative-free (single- or multi-objective) optimization subject to multiple inequality constraints. Both the objective and constraint functions are assumed to be smooth, non-linear and expensive to evaluate. As a consequence, the number of evaluations that can be used to carry out the optimization is very limited, as in complex industrial design optimization problems. The method we propose to overcome this difficulty has its roots in both the Bayesian and the multi-objective optimization literatures. More specifically, an extended domination rule is used to handle objectives and constraints in a unified way, and a corresponding expected hyper-volume improvement sampling criterion is proposed. This new criterion is naturally adapted to the search of a feasible point when none is available, and reduces to existing Bayesian sampling criteria---the classical Expected Improvement (EI) criterion and some of its constrained/multi-objective extensions---as soon as at least one feasible point is available. The calculation and optimization of the criterion are performed using Sequential Monte Carlo techniques. In particular, an algorithm similar to the subset simulation method, which is well known in the field of structural reliability, is used to estimate the criterion. The method, which we call BMOO (for Bayesian Multi-Objective Optimization), is compared to state-of-the-art algorithms for single- and multi-objective constrained optimization

Solving the G-problems in less than 500 iterations: Improved efficient constrained optimization by surrogate modeling and adaptive parameter control

Constrained optimization of high-dimensional numerical problems plays an important role in many scientific and industrial applications. Function evaluations in many industrial applications are severely limited and no analytical information about objective function and constraint functions is available. For such expensive black-box optimization tasks, the constraint optimization algorithm COBRA was proposed, making use of RBF surrogate modeling for both the objective and the constraint functions. COBRA has shown remarkable success in solving reliably complex benchmark problems in less than 500 function evaluations. Unfortunately, COBRA requires careful adjustment of parameters in order to do so. In this work we present a new self-adjusting algorithm SACOBRA, which is based on COBRA and capable to achieve high-quality results with very few function evaluations and no parameter tuning. It is shown with the help of performance profiles on a set of benchmark problems (G-problems, MOPTA08) that SACOBRA consistently outperforms any COBRA algorithm with fixed parameter setting. We analyze the importance of the several new elements in SACOBRA and find that each element of SACOBRA plays a role to boost up the overall optimization performance. We discuss the reasons behind and get in this way a better understanding of high-quality RBF surrogate modeling