Genetically designed heuristics for the bin packing problem

The bin packing problem (BPP) is a real-world problem that arises in different industrial applications related to minimization of space or time. The aim of this research is to automatically design an algorithm that places a collection of objects into the minimum number of fixed-size bins. For generating this heuristic we use Genetic Programming (GP) with a special set of terminals. The evolved strategy is compared to Best Fit Descending (BFD), a well-known heuristic for the bin packing problem. The results emphasize that evolved GP heuristics can perform equally and sometimes even better than BFD for the considered test problems. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.6 [Learning]; I.2.8 [Problem Solving, Control Methods and Search] General Terms Algorithms Keywords Genetic Programming, Heuristics, Bin Packing

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: GECCO
• Authors: Oana Muntean
• Keywords: Bin Packing Problem, GECCO 2007, Genetic Programming, Heuristics