A General Model for Automated Algorithm Design

This chapter presents a newly defined novel combinatorial optimisation problem, namely, the General Combinatorial Optimisation Problem (GCOP), whose decision variables are a set of elementary algorithm components. The combinations of these algorithm components, i.e. solutions of GCOP, thus represent different search algorithms. The objective of GCOP is to find the optimal combinations of algorithm components for solving optimisation problems. Solving the GCOP is thus equivalent to automatically designing the best search algorithms for optimisation problems. The definition of the GCOP is presented with a new taxonomy which categorises relevant literature on automated algorithm design into three lines of research, namely, automated algorithm configuration, selection and composition. Based on the decision space under consideration, the algorithm design itself is defined as an optimisation problem. Relevant literature is briefly reviewed, motivating a new line of exciting and challenging directions on the emerging research of automated algorithm design.