Niching in evolutionary multi-agent systems

Niching is a group of techniques used in evolutionary algorithms, useful in several types of problems, including multimodal or nonstationary optimization. This paper investigates the applicability of these methods to evolutionary multi-agent systems (EMAS), a hybrid model combining the advantages of evolutionary algorithms and multi-agent systems. This could increase the efficiency of this type of algorithms and allow to apply them to a wider class of problems. As a starting point, a simple but flexible EMAS framework is proposed. Then, it is shown how to extend this framework in order to introduce niching, by adapting two classical niching methods. Finally, preliminary experimental results show the efficiency and the simultaneous discovery of multiple optima by this modified EMAS.