Metaheuristics are prominent gradient-free optimizers for solving hard
problems that do not meet the rigorous mathematical assumptions of analytical
solvers. The canonical manual optimizer design could be laborious, untraceable
and error-prone, let alone human experts are not always available. This arises
increasing interest and demand in automating the optimizer design process. In
response, this paper proposes AutoOptLib, the first platform for accessible
automated design of metaheuristic optimizers. AutoOptLib leverages computing
resources to conceive, build up, and verify the design choices of the
optimizers. It requires much less labor resources and expertise than manual
design, democratizing satisfactory metaheuristic optimizers to a much broader
range of researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, by fully exploring the
design choices with computing resources, AutoOptLib has the potential to
surpass human experience, subsequently gaining enhanced performance compared
with human problem-solving. To realize the automated design, AutoOptLib
provides 1) a rich library of metaheuristic components for continuous,
discrete, and permutation problems; 2) a flexible algorithm representation for
evolving diverse algorithm structures; 3) different design objectives and
techniques for different optimization scenarios; and 4) a graphic user
interface for accessibility and practicability. AutoOptLib is fully written in
Matlab/Octave; its source code and documentation are available at
https://github.com/qz89/AutoOpt and https://AutoOpt.readthedocs.io/,
respectively