Combining Estimation of Distribution Algorithms and other Evolutionary techniques for combinatorial optimization

Title:	Combining Estimation of Distribution Algorithms and other Evolutionary techniques for combinatorial optimization	Image:Evolve1at300dpi.gif
Description:	The project will focus on the study, implementation, comparison and analysis of different algorithms for combinatorial optimization using techniques and algorithms proposed in Evolutionary Computation. In particular we are interested in the study of Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (1,2,3,4), a recent meta-heuristic, often presented as an evolution of Genetic Algorithms, where classical crossover and mutation operators, used in genetic algorithms, are replaced with operators that come from statistics, such as sampling and estimation. The focus will be on the implementation of new hybrid algorithms able to combine estimation of distribution algorithms with different approaches available in the evolutionary computation literature, such as genetic algorithms and evolutionary strategies, together with other local search techniques. Good coding (C/C++) abilities are required. Some background in combinatorial optimization form the "Fondamenti di Ricerca Operativa" is desirable. The project could require some effort in order to build and consolidate some background in MCMC techniques, such as Gibbs and Metropolis samplers (4). The project could be extended to master thesis, according to interesting and novel directions of research that will emerge in the first part of the work. Computer vision provides a large number of optimization problems, such as new-view synthesis, image segmentation, panorama stitching and texture restoration, among the others, (6). One common approach in this context is based on the use of binary Markov Random Fields and on the formalization of the optimization problem as the minimum of an energy function expressed as a square-free polynomial, (5). We are interested in the proposal, comparison and evaluation of different Estimation of Distribution Algorithms for solving real world problems that appear in computer vision. Pictures taken from http://www.genetic-programming.org and (6) Bibliography Pelikan, Martin; Goldberg, David; Lobo, Fernando (1999), A Survey of Optimization by Building and Using Probabilistic Models, Illinois: Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (IlliGAL), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Larrañga, Pedro; & Lozano, Jose A. (Eds.). Estimation of distribution algorithms: A new tool for evolutionary computation. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 2002. Lozano, J. A.; Larrañga, P.; Inza, I.; & Bengoetxea, E. (Eds.). Towards a new evolutionary computation. Advances in estimation of distribution algorithms. Springer, 2006. Pelikan, Martin; Sastry, Kumara; & Cantu-Paz, Erick (Eds.). Scalable optimization via probabilistic modeling: From algorithms to applications. Springer, 2006. Image Analysis, Random Fields Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods Carsten Rother, Vladimir Kolmogorov, Victor Lempitsky, Martin Szummer. Optimizing Binary MRFs via Extended Roof Duality, CVPR 2007
Tutor:	MatteoMatteucci (matteo.matteucci@polimi.it), LuigiMalago (malago@elet.polimi.it)
Start:	2009/10/01
Students:	1 - 2
CFU:	5 - 10
Research Area:	Machine Learning
Research Topic:	Evolutionary Computation, Stochastic Optimization
Level:	Ms
Type:	Course, Thesis
Status:	Closed