Contributions to Evolutionary Computation

Sammanfattning: We present in this thesis (1) an alternative model in the field of evolutionary computation, and (2) an experimental platform that can be used to evaluate and compare many different models in evolutionary computation.The presented model is, like other models in evolutionary computation, based on the principle of natural selection. The difference between the presented model and the other models is a difference in the interpretation of the principle of natural selection. Traditional models in evolutionary computation provide only a partial interpretation of the principle of natural selection, while the presented model is based on a more complete interpretation. As a consequence, the presented model can deal with the problem of local optima in a novel way.We have built an experimental platform in such a way that a large number of different evolutionary models can be simulated and tested in parallel. We present the result of a number of such simulations. In the construction of this platform, we divided the platform into different modules so that new evolutionary mechanisms and new problem modules easily can be added.