Abstract

This chapter aims to give a summary of evolutionary computation (EC) techniques. The summary includes a general description of the main families of algorithms belonging to the EC field as well as their main components. Also, we describe their evolution through the last years including latest advances in constraint handling methods, parallel models and algorithms, methods for dynamic environments, and multiobjective optimization, and so on. Also included are some observations about the relationship between EC techniques and other methods for optimization, in particular metaheuristics. Finally, we describe some new trends and give a glimpse of the numerous applications of EC techniques.