International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems

Many real-world problems, like microchip design, can be modeled by means of the well-known traveling salesman problem (TSP). Many instances of this problem can be found in the literature. Although several optimization algorithms have been applied to TSP instances, the selection of the more promising algorithm is, in practice, a difficult decision. In this paper, a new meta-learning-based approach is investigated for the selection of optimization algorithms for TSP instances. Essentially, a learning model is trained with TSP instances for which the performance of a set of optimization algorithms is known a priori. Then, the learned model is used to predict the best algorithm for a new TSP instance. Each instance is described by meta-features that capture characteristics of the TSP that affect the performance of the optimization algorithms. Given that the best solution for a given TSP instance can be obtained by several algorithms, the meta-learning problem is considered here to be a multi-label classification problem. Several experiments illustrate the performance of the proposed approach, with promising results.

A time series is a sequence of observations of a random variable. Hence, it is a stochastic process. Forecasting time series data is important component of operations research because these data often provide the foundation for decision models. This models are used to predict data points before they are measured based on known past events. Researches in this subject have been done in many areas like economy, energy production, ecology and others. To improve the process of time series forecasting it is important to identify which of past values will be considered to be used in the models by eliminating redundant or irrelevant attributes. Two hybrid systems Harmony Search with Neural Networks (HS) and Temporal Memory Search with Neural Networks (TMS) are improved and a new one is proposed: the Temporal Memory Search Limited with Neural Networks (TMSL). The performance of the techniques is investigated through an empirical evaluation on twenty real-world time series.

The main aim of biometric-based identification systems is to automatically recognize individuals based on their physiological and/or behavioural characteristics such as fingerprint, face, hand-geometry, among others. These systems offer several advantages over traditional forms of identity protection. However, there are still some important aspects that need to be addressed in these systems. The main questions are concerned with the security of biometric authentication systems since it is important to ensure the integrity and public acceptance of these systems. In order to avoid the problems arising from compromised biometric templates, the concept of cancellable biometrics has recently been introduced. The concept is to transform a biometric trait into a new representation for enrolment and matching. Although cancellable biometrics were proposed to solve privacy concerns, the concept raises new issues, since they make the authentication problem more complex and difficult to solve. Thus, more effective authentication structures are needed to perform these tasks. In this paper, we investigate the use of ensemble systems in cancellable biometrics, using fingerprint-based identification to illustrate the possible benefits accruing. In order to increase the effectiveness of the proposed ensemble systems, three feature selection methods will be used to distribute the attributes among the individual classifiers of an ensemble. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the performance of such well-established structures on transformed biometric data to determine whether they have a positive effect on the performance of this complex and difficult task.

Evolution strategies with q-Gaussian mutation, which allows the self-adaptation of the mutation distribution shape, is proposed for dynamic optimization problems in this paper. In the proposed method, a real parameter q, which allows to smoothly control the shape of the mutation distribution, is encoded in the chromosome of the individuals and is allowed to evolve. In the experimental study, the q-Gaussian mutation is compared to Gaussian and Cauchy mutation on experiments generated from the simulation of evolutionary robots and on dynamic optimization problems generated by the Moving Peaks generator.