Combating user fatigue in iGAs

Abstract

One of the daunting challenges of interactive genetic algorithms (iGAs)---genetic algorithms in which fitness measure of a solution is provided by a human rather than by a fitness function, model, or computation---is user fatigue which leads to sub-optimal solutions. This paper proposes a method to combat user fatigue by augmenting user evaluations with a synthetic fitness function. The proposed method combines partial ordering concepts, notion of non-domination from multiobjective optimization, and support vector machines to synthesize a fitness model based on user evaluation. The proposed method is used in an iGA on a simple test problem and the results demonstrate that the method actively combats user fatigue by requiring 3--7 times less user evaluation when compared to a simple iGA.