PREFACE
This volume is the written record of research to be presented at the second Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN-92) held at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, September 28-30, 1992.
The unifying theme of the PPSN conference is natural computation, i.e. the design, the theoretical and empirical understanding, and the comparison of algorithms gleaned from nature together with their application to real-world problems in science and technology.
Since 1990, there is a collaboration with the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA) resulting in an alternation of both conferences. The ICGA conferences will be held in the USA during the odd years while the PPSN conferences will be held in Europe during the even years. Both conferences provide a biannual meeting place for scientists from all over the world where they can discuss new theoretical, empirical and implementational developments in genetic algorithms, evolution strategies and other algorithms gleaned from nature.
The initial focus of the PPSN conference was somewhat broader than that of the ICGA conference. The proceedings of the last PPSN conference contained also contained several contributions on other physical metaphors. If we look at contributions to this conference, then we see that the focus has narrowed down from natural computation to biological and evolutionary computation.
We have tried to group the papers in thematic sections. The first section on the theory of evolutionary algorithms contains papers on the basic theory and papers studying the interactions between genetic operators are grouped.
The second section describes several extensions of evolutionary algorithms. Examples are algorithms designed for changing environments, algorithms which are biologically more realistic, and self-adapting algorithms. The two subsections handle genetic algorithms and evolution strategies, respectively.
Evolutionary algorithms have been applied to many domains. The third section has been subdivided in applications in optimization, computer science and engineering, chemistry and biology, and neural nets.
Evolutionary algorithms are not the only biological metaphor for computation and problem solving. Other sources of inspiration which are investigated in the fourth section are collective and cooperative behavior, pattern formation and the immune system.
Models used in natural computation are inherently parallel. Mapping this parallelism onto existing computers is necessary to exploit the full computational power of these algorithms. Recent developments on parallel algorithms are contained in the fifth and final section.
Just like during the last ICGA and PPSN conferences, most of the emphasis is on poster presentations. This promotes active interaction between researchers and the interested people. Only few papers have been selected for oral presentation based on how well they could stimulate the following discussion. Again, this has been done to promote active participation of the attendees.
For a long period of time, genetic algorithms in the United States and evolution strategies in Europe developed independently from each other. Only recently, both scientific communities started to interact and collaborate. Now we see that many contributions to this conference are coming from Japan reflecting a growing interest there. We hope that these proceedings give an impression of the ongoing work in our rapidly growing and active scientific field.
Reinhard Männer
Bernard Manderick
Editors
PPSN-92 CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION
PPSN-92 CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
PPSN-92 PROGRAM COMMITTEE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PPSN-92 INVITED SPEAKERS
We thank the invited speakers for their talks given at the conference:
Werner Ebeling, FRG
Evolutionary Search Including Developmental
Strategies
Grégroire Nicolis, Belgium
Nonlinear Dynamics,
Information Theory and the Symbolic Description of Complex Systems
Peter Schuster, Austria
Molecular Evolution and Optimization of
Biopolymers
PPSN-92 SUPPORTERS
The financial support by the following organizations is gratefully acknowledged.
ADDITIONAL REVIEWERS
We are grateful to the following persons for their help in reviewing papers for PPSN-92.