A Hyperparameter Adaptive Genetic Algorithm Based on DQN

The hyperparameters of the metaheuristic algorithm are difficult to determine when solving optimization problems. The existing methods mainly adjust hyperparameters through preset rules or traditional RL. The performance of the above methods is unsatisfactory and the generalization is poor. This work proposes a deep Q-learning network (DQN)-based dynamic setting framework for combinatorial hyperparameters, and applies it to a Genetic algorithm (GA) to improve its performance. By defining the four elements of the environment, state, action and reward required for learning strategy in advance, the parametrized strategy can be trained offline and different DQN models can be studied. Our method was compared with other algorithms and achieved the shortest path on 14 of 15 public TSP instances. Meanwhile, the test results on our simulation TSP validation dataset revealed that Category DQN achieved the best performance. This means the proposed method can effectively solve the problem of combinatorial hyperparameters setting, and bring more solving advantages to the GA.