An evolutionary algorithm for the block stacking problem

Authors:
Tim Hohm;Matthias Egli;Samuel Gaehwiler;Stefan Bleuler;Jonathan Feller;Damian Frick;Richard Huber;Mathias Karlsson;Reto Lingenhag;Thomas Ruetimann;Tom Sasse;Thomas Steiner;Janine Stocker;Eckart Zitzler
Affiliations:
Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich;Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich
Venue:
EA'07 Proceedings of the Evolution artificielle, 8th international conference on Artificial evolution
Year:
2007

Citing 2
Cited 0

A Genetic Algorithm with a Compact Solution Encoding for the Container Ship Stowage Problem

Journal of Heuristics
Overhang

SODA '06 Proceedings of the seventeenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithm

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Abstract

How has a stack of n blocks to be arranged in order to maximizeits overhang over a table edge while being stable? This questioncan be seen as an example application for applied statics and at the sametime leads to a challenging optimization problem that was discussed recentlyin two theoretical studies. Here, we address this problem by designing an evolutionary algorithm;the proposed method is applied to two instances of the block stackingproblem, maximizing the overhang for 20 and 50 block stacks. The studydemonstrates that the stacking problem is worthwhile to be investigatedin the context of randomized search algorithms: it represents an abstract,but still demanding instance of many real-world applications. Furthermore,the proposed algorithm may become useful in empirically testingthe tightness of theoretical upper bounds proposed for this problem.