OCTOBER 19-20, 2012 - YMCA University of Science & Technology

Proceedings of the National Conference on
Trends and Advances in Mechanical Engineering,
YMCA University of Science & Technology, Faridabad, Haryana, Oct 19-20, 2012
What is Genetic Algorithm
In a genetic algorithm, a population of strings (called chromosomes or the genotype of the genome), which encode
candidate solutions (called individuals, creatures, or phenotypes) to an optimization problem, is evolved toward
better solutions. Traditionally, solutions are represented in binary as strings of 0s and 1s, but other encodings are
also possible. The evolution usually starts from a population of randomly generated individuals and happens in
generations. In each generation, the fitness of every individual in the population is evaluated; multiple individuals
are stochastically selected from the current population based on their fitness, and modified and possibly randomly
mutated to form a new population. The new population is then used in the next iteration of the algorithm.
Commonly, the algorithm terminates when either a maximum number of generations has been produced, or a
satisfactory fitness level has been reached for the population. [5].
Basically a genetic algorithm requires:
1. a genetic representation of the solution domain,
2. a fitness function to evaluate the solution domain.
A standard representation of the solution is as an array of bits. Arrays of other types and structures can be used in
essentially the same way. The main property that makes these genetic representations convenient is that their parts
are easily aligned due to their fixed size, which facilitates simple crossover operations. Variable length
representations may also be used, but crossover implementation is more complex in this case. Tree-like
representations are explored in genetic programming and graph-form representations are explored in evolutionary
programming; a mix of both linear chromosomes and trees is explored in gene expression programming.
The fitness function is defined over the genetic representation and measures the quality of the represented solution.
The fitness function is always problem dependent.
Once the genetic representation and the fitness function are defined, a GA proceeds to initialize a population of
solutions (usually randomly) and then (usually) to improve it through repetitive application of the mutation,
crossover, inversion and selection operators. Uniform Crossover
In the crossover operation, two new children are formed by exchanging the genetic information between two parent
chromosomes. Multipoint crossover defines crossover points as places between loci where an individual can be split.
Uniform crossover generalizes this scheme to make every locus a potential crossover point. [4] .A crossover mask,
the same length as the individual structure is created at random and the parity of the bits in the mask indicate which
parent will supply the offspring with which bits. This method is identical to discrete recombination. Consider the
following two individuals with 11 binary variables each:
Individual 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0
Individual 2 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1
For each variable the parent who contributes its variable to the offspring is chosen randomly with equal probability.
Here, the offspring 1 is produced by taking the bit from parent 1 if the corresponding mask bit is 1 or the bit from
parent 2 if the corresponding mask bit is 0. Offspring 2 is created using the inverse of the mask, usually.
Sample 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0
Sample 2 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1
After crossover the new individuals are created:
offspring 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
offspring 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Uniform crossover has been claimed to reduce the bias associated with the length of the binary representation used
and the particular coding for a given parameter set. This helps to overcome the bias in single-point crossover
towards short substrings without requiring precise understanding of the significance of the individual bits in the
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