Improving the optimization performance by an adaptable design: A dynamic selection of operators via criteria-based matrix for evolutionary algorithms

The balance between exploration and exploitation is an important feature in Evolutionary Algorithms (EA). The use of different operators permits to explore the search space and exploit the most prominent regions. This article introduces a dynamic operator selection method that considers different criteria at the same time. The proposed approach uses a dynamic decision matrix (DyDM) to identify which operators must be used at each iteration based on how the algorithm behaves. The DyDM considers specific information as the diversity of the algorithm to avoid stagnation, the actual iteration to work accordingly, and the fitness to direct the search. The proposed approach is called Dynamic Decision Matrix Optimizer (DyDMO) and it has been compared with different well-known algorithms tested on the CEC 2017 benchmark functions. The comparative analysis and non-parametric statistical tests validate how DyDMO im-proves the quality of the solutions and is more stable than its comnetitors.