A New Proposal for Multi-Objective Optimization using Differential Evolution and Rough Sets Theory


Abstract

This paper presents a new multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) based on differential evolution and rough sets theory. The proposed approach adopts an external archive in order to retain the nondominated solutions found during the evolutionary process. Additionally, the approach also incorporates the concept of par-dominance to get a good distribution of the solutions retained. The main idea of the approach is to use differential evolution (DE) as our main search engine, trying to translate its good convergence properties exhibited in single-objective optimization to the multiobjective case. Rough sets theory is adopted in a second stage of the search in order to improve the spread of the nondominated solutions that have been found so far. Our hybrid approach is validated using standard test functions and metrics commonly adopted in the specialized literature. Our results are compared with respect to the NSGA-II, which is a MOEA representative of the state-of-the-art in the area.