Haiku - a Scala Combinator Toolkit for Semi-automated Composition of Metaheuristics

Abstract

Abstract. There is an emerging trend towards the automated design of metaheuristics at the software component level. In principle, metaheuristics have a relatively clean decomposition, where well-known frameworks such as ILS and EA are parameterised by variant components for acceptance, perturbation etc. Automated generation of these frameworks is not so simple in practice, since the coupling between components may be implementation specific. Compositionality is the ability to freely express a space of designs 'bottom up' in terms of elementary components: previous work in this area has used combinators, a modular and functional approach to componentisation arising from foundational Computer Science. In this article, we describe Haiku, a combinator toolkit written in the Scala language, which builds upon previous work to further automate the process by automatically composing the external dependencies of components. We provide examples of use and give a case study in which a programatically-generated heuristic is applied to the Travelling Salesman Problem within an Evolutionary Strategies framework.

Metaheuristics "In the Large"

“…The default practice in metaheuristic implementations is to make ad hoc use of environmental state by accessing hidden non-local variables; in fact, all but a few [55,69] follow this kind of practice. This runs counter to automated assembly requirements: in order to present them to a configuration tool, such variables must be manually gathered.…”

Extending the “Open-Closed Principle” to Automated Algorithm Configuration

“…The desirability of the monadic approach for metaheuristic design was recently advocated (Swan et al, 2015) as part of a wider research program, echoed by an emphatic call for re-usable libraries such as CILib (Pampara and Engelbrecht, 2015). The only work that we are aware of in which state-handling is used in explicit support of metaheuristic assembly is given by (Kocsis et al, 2015), who propose a combinator-based approach where component dependencies are amalgamated into a shared workspace.…”

hMod: A software framework for assembling highly detailed heuristics algorithms

“…It is possible to find applications of OO languages and methods for solving operations research problems on specific heuristic methods . Additionally, there are automation approaches for the design of heuristic methods and components, including architectural approaches such as metaheuristics in the large…”

“…31,32 It is possible to find applications of OO languages and methods for solving operations research problems on specific heuristic methods. 33,34 Additionally, there are automation approaches for the design of heuristic methods and components, 35,36 including architectural approaches such as metaheuristics in the large. 37 From a generic perspective, Parejo et al presented a comprehensive review and benchmark regarding multiple libraries, 3 from which several observations can be highlighted.…”