The 5th International Workshop on Learning Classi?er Systems (IWLCS2002) was held September 7–8, 2002, in Granada, Spain, during the 7th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN VII). We have included in this volume revised and extended versions of the papers presented at the workshop. In the ?rst paper, Browne introduces a new model of learning classi?er system, iLCS, and tests it on the Wisconsin Breast Cancer classi?cation problem. Dixon et al. present an algorithm for reducing the solutions evolved by the classi?er system XCS, so as to produce a small set of readily understandable rules. Enee and Barbaroux take a close look at Pittsburgh-style classi?er systems, focusing on the multi-agent problem known as El-farol. Holmes and Bilker investigate the effect that various types of missing data have on the classi?cation performance of learning classi?er systems. The two papers by Kovacs deal with an important theoretical issue in learning classi?er systems: the use of accuracy-based ?tness as opposed to the more traditional strength-based ?tness. In the ?rst paper, Kovacs introduces a strength-based version of XCS, called SB-XCS. The original XCS and the new SB-XCS are compared in the second paper, where - vacs discusses the different classes of solutions that XCS and SB-XCS tend to evolve.

Researchers and practitioners alike are increasingly turning to search, op timization, and machine-learning procedures based on natural selection and natural genetics to solve problems across the spectrum of human endeavor. These genetic algorithms and techniques of evolutionary computation are solv ing problems and inventing new hardware and software that rival human designs. The Kluwer Series on Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation pub lishes research monographs, edited collections, and graduate-level texts in this rapidly growing field. Primary areas of coverage include the theory, implemen tation, and application of genetic algorithms (GAs), evolution strategies (ESs), evolutionary programming (EP), learning classifier systems (LCSs) and other variants of genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC). The series also pub lishes texts in related fields such as artificial life, adaptive behavior, artificial immune systems, agent-based systems, neural computing, fuzzy systems, and quantum computing as long as GEC techniques are part of or inspiration for the system being described. This encyclopedic volume on the use of the algorithms of genetic and evolu tionary computation for the solution of multi-objective problems is a landmark addition to the literature that comes just in the nick of time. Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are receiving increasing and unprecedented attention. Researchers and practitioners are finding an irresistible match be tween the popUlation available in most genetic and evolutionary algorithms and the need in multi-objective problems to approximate the Pareto trade-off curve or surface.

This book presents an extensive variety of multi-objective problems across diverse disciplines, along with statistical solutions using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs). The topics discussed serve to promote a wider understanding as well as the use of MOEAs, the aim being to find good solutions for high-dimensional real-world design applications. The book contains a large collection of MOEA applications from many researchers, and thus provides the practitioner with detailed algorithmic direction to achieve good results in their selected problem domain.

Researchers have obtained robots that display an amazing slew of behaviors and perform a multitude of tasks, including perception of environment, negotiating rough terrain, and pushing boxes. This volume offers a wide spectrum of sample works developed in leading research throughout the world about evolutionary mobile robotics and demonstrates the success of the technique in evolving efficient and capable mobile robots.

Agent based evolutionary search is an emerging paradigm in computational int- ligence offering the potential to conceptualize and solve a variety of complex problems such as currency trading, production planning, disaster response m- agement, business process management etc. There has been a significant growth in the number of publications related to the development and applications of agent based systems in recent years which has prompted special issues of journals and dedicated sessions in premier conferences. The notion of an agent with its ability to sense, learn and act autonomously - lows the development of a plethora of efficient algorithms to deal with complex problems. This notion of an agent differs significantly from a restrictive definition of a solution in an evolutionary algorithm and opens up the possibility to model and capture emergent behavior of complex systems through a natural age- oriented decomposition of the problem space. While this flexibility of represen- tion offered by agent based systems is widely acknowledged, they need to be - signed for specific purposes capturing the right level of details and description. This edited volume is aimed to provide the readers with a brief background of agent based evolutionary search, recent developments and studies dealing with various levels of information abstraction and applications of agent based evo- tionary systems. There are 12 peer reviewed chapters in this book authored by d- tinguished researchers who have shared their experience and findings spanning across a wide range of applications.