CEC'2013 Niching Methods Competition Summary

Overview

This competition is organized in association with the 2013 IEEE CEC Special Session on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization. The aim of the competition is to provide a common platform that encourages fair and easy comparisons across different niching algorithms. The competition allows participants to run their own niching algorithms on 20 benchmark multimodal functions with different characteristics and levels of difficulty. Researchers are welcome to evaluate their niching algorithms using this benchmark suite, and report the results by submitting a paper to the associated niching special session (i.e., submitting via the online submission system of CEC'2013). In case it is too late to submit the paper (i.e., passing the CEC'2013 submission deadline), author may submit their results in a report directly to the special session organizer Xiaodong Li, in order to be counted in the competition. In addition, the authors are also expected to submit the solutions found in a separate report, in order for us to validate the results.

Test suite for the competiion as well as the performance measures are implemented in Matlab, Java and C++, and available for download here (). Please read the following technical report about these benchmark functions:

Reference: X. Li, A. Engelbrecht, and M.G. Epitropakis, ``Benchmark Functions for CEC'2013 Special Session and Competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Function Optimization'', Technical Report, Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning Group, RMIT University, Australia, 2013.

To those who may participate in the competition: Please inform Xiaodong Li about your participation, so that we can update you about any correction of bugs or extension of the deadline.

Important Dates:

• Paper Submission: 15 March 2013 (extended)
• Notification of Acceptance: 22 April 2013
• Final Paper Submission: 6 May 2013

If you miss the above deadline, please submit your results in a report directly to Xiaodong Li, no later than 6 May 2013.