Applied (Meta)-Heuristic in Intelligent Systems

Engineering and business problems are becoming increasingly difficult to solve due to the new economics triggered by big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things. Exact algorithms and heuristics are insufficient for solving such large and unstructured problems; instead, metaheuristic algorithms have emerged as the prevailing methods. A generic metaheuristic framework guides the course of search trajectories beyond local optimality, thus overcoming the limitations of traditional computation methods. The application of modern metaheuristics ranges from unmanned aerial and ground surface vehicles, unmanned factories, resource-constrained production, and humanoids to green logistics, renewable energy, circular economy, agricultural technology, environmental protection, finance technology, and the entertainment industry. This Special Issue presents high-quality papers proposing modern metaheuristics in intelligent systems

New Swarm-Based Metaheuristics for Resource Allocation and Schwduling Problems

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Ingeniería Informática. Fecha de lectura : 10-07-2017Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 10-01-201

LOGIC AND CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING FOR COMPUTATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

Computational Sustainability is an interdisciplinary field that aims to develop computational and mathematical models and methods for decision making concerning the management and allocation of resources in order to help solve environmental problems. This thesis deals with a broad spectrum of such problems (energy efficiency, water management, limiting greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption) giving a contribution towards their solution by means of Logic Programming (LP) and Constraint Programming (CP), declarative paradigms from Artificial Intelligence of proven solidity. The problems described in this thesis were proposed by experts of the respective domains and tested on the real data instances they provided. The results are encouraging and show the aptness of the chosen methodologies and approaches. The overall aim of this work is twofold: both to address real world problems in order to achieve practical results and to get, from the application of LP and CP technologies to complex scenarios, feedback and directions useful for their improvement

Applied Metaheuristic Computing

For decades, Applied Metaheuristic Computing (AMC) has been a prevailing optimization technique for tackling perplexing engineering and business problems, such as scheduling, routing, ordering, bin packing, assignment, facility layout planning, among others. This is partly because the classic exact methods are constrained with prior assumptions, and partly due to the heuristics being problem-dependent and lacking generalization. AMC, on the contrary, guides the course of low-level heuristics to search beyond the local optimality, which impairs the capability of traditional computation methods. This topic series has collected quality papers proposing cutting-edge methodology and innovative applications which drive the advances of AMC

Reinforcement Learning

Brains rule the world, and brain-like computation is increasingly used in computers and electronic devices. Brain-like computation is about processing and interpreting data or directly putting forward and performing actions. Learning is a very important aspect. This book is on reinforcement learning which involves performing actions to achieve a goal. The first 11 chapters of this book describe and extend the scope of reinforcement learning. The remaining 11 chapters show that there is already wide usage in numerous fields. Reinforcement learning can tackle control tasks that are too complex for traditional, hand-designed, non-learning controllers. As learning computers can deal with technical complexities, the tasks of human operators remain to specify goals on increasingly higher levels. This book shows that reinforcement learning is a very dynamic area in terms of theory and applications and it shall stimulate and encourage new research in this field