In recent years, there have been many studies in which tailored heuristics and meta-heuristics have been applied to specific optimisation problems. These algorithms can be extremely efficient, but may also lack generality. In contrast, the research outlined in this monograph focuses on building a general-purpose combinatorial optimisation problem solver using a variety of meta-heuristic algorithms including Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search. The work is novel because it uses a modelling environment in which the solution is stored in dense dynamic list structures, unlike a more...

Asweapproachthelimitsandcapabilitiesofmachines, we?ndthattheprinciple of diminishing returns is forcing scientists to turn their attention towardbiology to provide practical solutions to problems in our increasingly complex world.An emerging?eldofsciencethatstudies thesystemsrelatedtolife, its processesand evolution is known as Art?cial Life (ALife). It draws on the skills and talents of scientists from a variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, biology, psychology, evolutionand computer science. These researchersareshowingthat, by using even simple simulations of the basic...

Throughout the evolutionary history of this planet, biological systems have been able to adapt, survive and ?ourish despite the turmoils and upheavals of the environment. This ability has long fascinated and inspired people to emulate and adapt natural processes for application in the arti?cial world of human endeavours. The realm of optimisation problems is no exception. In fact, in recent years biological systems have been the inspiration of the majority of meta-heuristic search algorithms including, but not limited to, genetic algorithms, particle swarmoptimisation, ant colony optimisation...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence, ACALCI 2015, held in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in February 2015. The 34 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: philosophy and theory; game environments and methods; learning, memory and optimization; and applications and implementations.