The state of the art on buffer allocation problem: a comprehensive survey

The buffer allocation problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem and it is an important research issue in designing manufacturing systems. The problem deals with finding optimal buffer sizes to be allocated into buffer areas in a production system to achieve a specific objective. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on buffer allocation problem in production systems. To provide a systematic review of current relevant research, first studies are grouped in two categories: 1. Reliable production lines, 2. Unreliable production lines. Next, the studies in each group are reviewed based on topology of the production line, the solution methodologies suggested and the objective function employed. The aim of this review is twofold. First, it provides an overview of recent advances in the field in order to highlight the new trends in solution methodology. Second, it presents ideas for future research by identifying gaps in the current literature.     

Theoretical and numerical constraint-handling techniques used with evolutionary algorithms: a survey of the state of the art

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the most popular constraint-handling techniques currently used with evolutionary algorithms. We review approaches that go from simple variations of a penalty function, to others, more sophisticated, that are biologically inspired on emulations of the immune system, culture or ant colonies. Besides describing briefly each of these approaches (or groups of techniques), we provide some criticism regarding their highlights and drawbacks. A small comparative study is also conducted, in order to assess the performance of several penalty-based approaches with respect to a dominance-based technique proposed by the author, and with respect to some mathematical programming approaches. Finally, we provide some guidelines regarding how to select the most appropriate constraint-handling technique for a certain application, and we conclude with some of the most promising paths of future research in this area.     

Parallel manipulators: state of the art and perspectives

Parallel manipulators have been increasingly developed over the last few years from a theoretical view point as well as for practical applications. In this paper, recent advances are summarized and various applications for this kind of manipulator are illustrated.     

Structured population genetic algorithms: a literature survey

The Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been one of the most studied topics in evolutionary algorithm literature. Mimicking natural processes of inheritance, mutation, natural selection and genetic operators, GAs have been successful in solving various optimization problems. However, standard GA is often criticized as being too biased in candidate solutions due to genetic drift in search. As a result, GAs sometimes converge on premature solutions. In this paper, we survey the major advances in GA, particularly in relation to the class of structured population GAs, where better exploration and exploitation of the search space is accomplished by controlling interactions among individuals in the population pool. They can be classified as spatial segregation, spatial distance and heterogeneous population. Additionally, secondary factors such as aging, social behaviour, and so forth further guide and shape the reproduction process. Restricting randomness in reproduction has been seen to have positive effects on GAs. It is our hope that by reviewing the many existing algorithms, we shall see even better algorithms being developed.     

A survey of genetic algorithms for solving multi depot vehicle routing problem

This article presents a survey of genetic algorithms that are designed for solving multi depot vehicle routing problem. In this context, most of the articles focus on different genetic approaches, methods and operators, commonly used in practical applications to solve this well-known and researched problem. Besides providing an up-to-date overview of the research in the field, the results of a thorough experiment are presented and discussed, which evaluated the efficiency of different existing genetic methods on standard benchmark problems in detail. In this manner, the insights into strengths and weaknesses of specific methods, operators and settings are presented, which should help researchers and practitioners to optimize their solutions in further studies done with the similar type of the problem in mind. Finally, genetic algorithm based solutions are compared with other existing approaches, both exact and heuristic, for solving this same problem.     

Parallel algorithms for the longest common subsequence problem

A subsequence of a given string is any string obtained by deleting none or some symbols from the given string. A longest common subsequence (LCS) of two strings is a common subsequence of both that is as long as any other common subsequences. The problem is to find the LCS of two given strings. The bound on the complexity of this problem under the decision tree model is known to be mn if the number of distinct symbols that can appear in strings is infinite, where m and n are the lengths of the two strings, respectively, and m⩽n. In this paper, we propose two parallel algorithms far this problem on the CREW-PRAM model. One takes O(log² m + log n) time with mn/log m processors, which is faster than all the existing algorithms on the same model. The other takes O(log² m log log m) time with mn/(log² m log log m) processors when log² m log log m > log n, or otherwise O(log n) time with mn/log n processors, which is optimal in the sense that the time×processors bound matches the complexity bound of the problem. Both algorithms exploit nice properties of the LCS problem that are discovered in this paper     

Solving a timetabling problem using hybrid genetic algorithms

All over the world, human resources are used on all kinds of different scheduling problems, many of which are time-consuming and tedious. Scheduling tools are thus very welcome. This paper presents a research project, where Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are used as the basis for solving a timetabling problem concerning medical doctors attached to an emergency service. All the doctors express personal preferences, thereby making the scheduling rather difficult. In its natural form, the timetabling problem for the emergency service is stated as a number of constraints to be fulfilled. For this reason, it was decided to compare the strength of a Co-evolutionary Constraint Satisfaction (CCS) technique with that of two other GA approaches. Distributed GAs and a simple special-purpose hill climber were introduced, to improve the performance of the three algorithms. Finally, the performance of the GAs was compared with that of some standard, nonGA approaches. The distributed hybrid GAs were by far the most successful, and one of these hybrid algorithms is currently used for solving the timetabling problem at the emergency service. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parallel processing, neural networks and genetic algorithms

In an earlier paper[1] some recent developments in computational technology to structural engineering were described. The developments included: parallel and distributed computing; neural networks; and genetic algorithms. In this paper, the authors concentrate on parallel implementations of neural networks and genetic algorithms. In the final section of the paper the authors show how a parallel finite element analysis may be undertaken in an efficient manner by preprocessing of the finite element model using a genetic algorithm utilizing a neural network predictor. This preprocessing is the partitioning of the finite element mesh into sub-domains to ensure load balancing and minimum interprocessor communication during the parallel finite element analysis on a MIMD distributed memory computer. © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Limited. All rights reserved.     

The state of the art in intelligent real-time FMS control: a comprehensive survey

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) have been developed with the hope that they would provide a means to tackle a threefold challenge — better quality, lower cost and shorter lead times — by integrating machine tools, robots, material handling and storage systems, and computers. Control of the integrated system presented a new set of problems as well as challenges, which have been receiving considerable attention from the academic community as well as from industrial system users. Intelligent control, which involves using computers to assist in decision making at various stages of the control process, has been advocated by many researchers as a possible avenue to reach a solution to these problems. This paper provides a review of the state of the art in intelligent control of FMS, in an attempt to supplement earlier general reviews via a more focused perspective. The principles of several techniques, namely simulation, knowledge based, example based, petri nets, and hybrid approaches are briefly introduced, and publications are reviewed, followed by discussions ontheir potential. Suggestions for further research and development are also enumerated.     

Semantic annotation for knowledge management: Requirements and a survey of the state of the art

While much of a company's knowledge can be found in text repositories, current content management systems have limited capabilities for structuring and interpreting documents. In the emerging Semantic Web, search, interpretation and aggregation can be addressed by ontology-based semantic mark-up. In this paper, we examine semantic annotation, identify a number of requirements, and review the current generation of semantic annotation systems. This analysis shows that, while there is still some way to go before semantic annotation tools will be able to address fully all the knowledge management needs, research in the area is active and making good progress.     

Parallel heterogeneous genetic algorithms for continuous optimization

In this paper we address the physical parallelization of a very efficient genetic algorithm (GA) known as gradual distributed real-coded GA (GD-RCGA). This search model naturally provides a set of eight subpopulations residing in a cube topology having two faces for promoting exploration and exploitation. The resulting technique has been shown to yield very accurate results in continuous optimization by using crossover operators tuned to explore and exploit the solutions inside each subpopulation. Here, we encompass the actual parallelization of the technique, and get deeper into the importance of running a synchronous versus an asynchronous version of the basic GD-RCGA model. We also present the evaluation of the parallel execution of GD-RCGA over two local area networks, a Fast-Ethernet network and a Myrinet network. Our results indicate that the GD-RCGA model maintains a very high level of accuracy for continuous optimization when run in parallel, and we also demonstrate the relative advantages of each algorithm version over the two networks. Finally, we show that the async parallelization scales better than the sync one, what suggests future research lines for WAN execution and new models of search based on the original two-faced cube.     

Medical image fusion: A survey of the state of the art

Medical image fusion is the process of registering and combining multiple images from single or multiple imaging modalities to improve the imaging quality and reduce randomness and redundancy in order to increase the clinical applicability of medical images for diagnosis and assessment of medical problems. Multi-modal medical image fusion algorithms and devices have shown notable achievements in improving clinical accuracy of decisions based on medical images. This review article provides a factual listing of methods and summarizes the broad scientific challenges faced in the field of medical image fusion. We characterize the medical image fusion research based on (1) the widely used image fusion methods, (2) imaging modalities, and (3) imaging of organs that are under study. This review concludes that even though there exists several open ended technological and scientific challenges, the fusion of medical images has proved to be useful for advancing the clinical reliability of using medical imaging for medical diagnostics and analysis, and is a scientific discipline that has the potential to significantly grow in the coming years.     

Pixel-level image fusion: A survey of the state of the art

Pixel-level image fusion is designed to combine multiple input images into a fused image, which is expected to be more informative for human or machine perception as compared to any of the input images. Due to this advantage, pixel-level image fusion has shown notable achievements in remote sensing, medical imaging, and night vision applications. In this paper, we first provide a comprehensive survey of the state of the art pixel-level image fusion methods. Then, the existing fusion quality measures are summarized. Next, four major applications, i.e., remote sensing, medical diagnosis, surveillance, photography, and challenges in pixel-level image fusion applications are analyzed. At last, this review concludes that although various image fusion methods have been proposed, there still exist several future directions in different image fusion applications. Therefore, the researches in the image fusion field are still expected to significantly grow in the coming years.     

Parallel algorithms for the single source shortest path problem

We present several parallel algorithms for the problem of finding shortest paths from a specified vertex (called the source) to all others in a weighted directed graph. The algorithms are for machines ranging from array processors, multipleinstruction multiple-data stream machines to a special network of processors. These algorithms have been designed by “parallelizing” two classic sequential algorithms — one due to Dijkstra (1959), the other due to Moore (1957). Our interest is not only in obtaining speeded-up parallel versions of the algorithms but also in exploring the design principles, the commonality of correctness proofs of the different versions, and the subjective complexity of explaining and understanding these versions.     

遗传算法在货运车辆优化调度中的应用

本文在阐述了遗传算法基本理论和车辆优化调度基本理论的基础上,进一步论述了遗传算法在一般车辆优化调度中的应用。参考近年来遗传算法应用于车辆优化调度的一些文献,对应用于不同情况下货运车辆优化调度的遗传算法进行了总结和分析。最后对本文进行总结,并对未来的遗传算法在货运车辆优化调度中的应用提出了发展趋势。     

Data-enabled learning and control algorithms for intelligent glucose management: The state of the art

External insulin administration is an effective way for patients with diabetes mellitus to regulate their blood glucose. Multiple daily injections (MDIs), sensor-augmented pump (SAP) and artificial pancreas (AP) are widely adopted approaches in insulin therapy. With the increasing popularity of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) sensors, a large number of data-enabled learning and control algorithms have been developed for MDI, SAP and AP. In this paper, we perform a systemic review concerning the state-of-the-art methodologies that are developed for MDI, SAP and AP with feedback from CGM data or other available data, from a systems and control perspective. The review characterizes the traditional learning and control methods developed for the MDI, SAP and AP, including run-to-run control, proportional–integral–derivative control, fuzzy logic control and model predictive control, as well as the discussions on the roles of machine learning technologies in MDI, SAP and AP. Finally, potential future directions on the algorithm architecture design, a unified control framework for MDI, SAP and AP algorithm design and practical usage of the MDI, SAP and AP are discussed.     

基于建筑块迁移策略的并行遗传算法

通过分析模式定理及建筑块理论,提出一种基于建筑块迁移策略并行遗传算法.算法根据种群的收敛情况,从其他种群中获取非重叠的建筑块,采用模拟退火思想防止优良模式的浓度过快地增大引起早熟.理论分析和对多峰函数的仿真结果均表明,该算法减少了无效迁移次数,降低了通信开销,而且发生成熟前收敛的概率明显下降,保证了遗传算法的全局收敛性.     

Genetic algorithms: a survey

Genetic algorithms provide an alternative to traditional optimization techniques by using directed random searches to locate optimal solutions in complex landscapes. We introduce the art and science of genetic algorithms and survey current issues in GA theory and practice. We do not present a detailed study, instead, we offer a quick guide into the labyrinth of GA research. First, we draw the analogy between genetic algorithms and the search processes in nature. Then we describe the genetic algorithm that Holland introduced in 1975 and the workings of GAs. After a survey of techniques proposed as improvements to Holland's GA and of some radically different approaches, we survey the advances in GA theory related to modeling, dynamics, and deception     

Group multicast routing problem: A genetic algorithms based approach

To save network resources, multicast transmissions are more and more adopted by the operators when the same content has to reach several destinations in parallel, such as in IPTV services, radio broadcast and video-clip streaming. Though, with respect to unicast transmissions, multicast sessions make the routing problem more complex with huge sets of trees to be evaluated. Additionally, since in the real world several multicast sessions occur simultaneously, the suitable trees for more sessions have to be found concurrently. This problem is addressed in this paper, which proposes the use of the genetic algorithms (GA) to reduce the number of solutions to be evaluated. Firstly, a heuristic procedure is employed to generate a set of possible trees for each session in isolation; secondly, the GA are applied to find the appropriate combination of the trees to comply with the bandwidth needs of the group of multicast sessions simultaneously. The goodness of each solution is assessed by means of an expression that weights both network bandwidth allocation and one-way delay. Some key parameters are also introduced that allow the operator to find the desired balance between quality of service and network resource utilization. Experimental results are provided to show the performance of the proposed algorithm compared with alternative solutions in terms of bandwidth utilization and transmission delay and to illustrate the influence of the selection and crossover procedures configuration.