The K-Bit-Swap: A New Genetic Algorithm Operator

Genetic algorithms (GA) mostly commonly use three main operators: selection, crossover and mutation, although many others have been proposed in the literature. This article in- troduces a new operator, k-bit-swap, which swaps bits be- tween two strings without preserving the location of those bits, changing their order of bits in the string. It can be considered as a form of crossover. We investigate the e ects of this operator and demonstrate that its use improves the speed and performance on several well-known problems. Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.2.8 [Arti cial Intelligence]: Problem solving, Control methods and search{ Heuristic methods