Group decision making hyper-heuristics for function optimisation

Abstract

A hyper-heuristic is a high level methodology which performs search over the space of heuristics each operating on the space of solutions to solve hard computational problems. This search process is based on either generation or selection of low level heuristics. The latter approach is used in selection hyper-heuristics. A generic selection hyper-heuristic has two main components which operate successively: heuristic selection and move acceptance methods. An initially generated solution is improved iteratively using these methods. At a given step, the most appropriate heuristic is selected from a fixed set of low level heuristics and applied to a candidate solution producing a new one. Then, a decision is made whether to accept or reject the new solution. This process is repeated until the termination criterion is satisfied. There is strong empirical evidence that the choice of selection hyper-heuristic influences its overall performance. This is one of the first studies to the best of our knowledge that suggests and explores the use of group decision making methods for move acceptance in selection hyper-heuristics. The acceptance decision for a move is performed by multiple methods instead of a single one. The performance of four such group decision making move acceptance methods are analysed within different hyper-heuristics over a set of benchmark functions. The experimental results show that the group decision making strategies have potential to improve the overall performance of selection hyper-heuristics.