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Evolving Bin Packing Heuristics with Genetic Programming

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Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IX (PPSN 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4193))

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Abstract

The bin-packing problem is a well known NP-Hard optimisation problem, and, over the years, many heuristics have been developed to generate good quality solutions. This paper outlines a genetic programming system which evolves a heuristic that decides whether to put a piece in a bin when presented with the sum of the pieces already in the bin and the size of the piece that is about to be packed. This heuristic operates in a fixed framework that iterates through the open bins, applying the heuristic to each one, before deciding which bin to use. The best evolved programs emulate the functionality of the human designed ‘first-fit’ heuristic. Thus, the contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that genetic programming can be employed to automatically evolve bin packing heuristics which are the same as high quality heuristics which have been designed by humans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Information Technology, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, United Kingdom

    E. K. Burke, M. R. Hyde & G. Kendall

Authors
  1. E. K. Burke
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  2. M. R. Hyde
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  3. G. Kendall
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Science Institute, University of Iceland, P.O. Box, Iceland

    Thomas Philip Runarsson

  2. Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Hochschulstr. 1, A-6850, Dornbirn, Austria

    Hans-Georg Beyer

  3. Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Group, School of Computer Science & IT, University of Nottingham, NG8 1BB, Nottingham, UK

    Edmund Burke

  4. Depto. Arquitectura y Tecnologa de Computadores, ETS Ingeiera Informtica, C/Daniel Saucedo Aranda, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Juan J. Merelo-Guervós

  5. Colorado State University, 80523, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    L. Darrell Whitley

  6. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Xin Yao

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Burke, E.K., Hyde, M.R., Kendall, G. (2006). Evolving Bin Packing Heuristics with Genetic Programming. In: Runarsson, T.P., Beyer, HG., Burke, E., Merelo-Guervós, J.J., Whitley, L.D., Yao, X. (eds) Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IX. PPSN 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4193. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11844297_87

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11844297_87

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-38990-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38991-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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