Title :
A cooperative distributed Hyper-Heuristic framework for scheduling
Author :
Ouelhadj, Djamila ; Petrovic, Sanja
Author_Institution :
Res. Group, Univ. of Nottingham, Nottingham
Abstract :
In recent years, hyper-heuristics have emerged as a new search methodology that is motivated by the goal of increasing the level of generality of meta-heuristics. In this paper, we aim at investigating the role of cooperative decision making in the selection process of low level heuristics. We propose a novel cooperative distributed hyper-heuristic framework. The cooperative distributed hyper-heuristic framework is an agent-based system composed of a Hyper-Heuristic Agent (HHA) and a number of Low Level Heuristic Agents (LLHA). The HHA is in charge of the selection of the low level heuristic to apply at a decision point in the search process. The LLHAs search synchronously through the same solution space, starting from the same solution and using different low level heuristics. We conducted several experiments, using the permutation flow shop benchmark instances, to investigate the performance of the developed cooperative distributed hyper-heuristic approaches.
Keywords :
decision making; flow shop scheduling; multi-agent systems; search problems; agent-based system; cooperative distributed hyper-heuristic framework; decision making; flow shop scheduling; low level hyper-heuristic agent; search process; selection process; Computer science; Decision making; Distributed decision making; Genetic algorithms; Job shop scheduling; Learning; Optimization methods; Processor scheduling; Simulated annealing; cooperation; distributed decision making; flow shop scheduling; hyper-heuristics; multi-agents;
Conference_Titel :
Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2008. SMC 2008. IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Singapore
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2383-5
Electronic_ISBN :
1062-922X
DOI :
10.1109/ICSMC.2008.4811681