Technical Tutorials (on March 6, 2011 )

Tutorial 1:

Bio‐inspired Approaches to Optimization – Dr. Raghavendra V. Kulkarni

Dr. Raghavendra V. Kulkarni, Dept. of Wireless Networks and Applications, Amrita University, Amritapuri

Optimization intuitively refers to determining “good” values of one or more variables (such as the number of study hours and the percentage of income to save in a retirement plan). Optimization is an extremely important task in all aspects of engineering, business and life. Several deterministic approaches to engineering optimization exist. These approaches are characterized by exponential increase in computational expenses with increase in the number of optimization variables. This is referred to as the curse‐of‐dimensionality. This renders the approaches unattractive for many real‐time optimization problems.

Nature tackles the problem of optimization with simple and yet wonderful approaches. Ants find the shortest and yet the safest route to their food. Birds fly in a coordinated manner as if they follow a central command. Such biological intelligence has inspired computer scientists to develop optimization algorithms that are computationally inexpensive, therefore quick. Such algorithms produce satisfactory optimization results in reasonable time frame.