An improved evolution strategy for constrained circle packing problem

This paper proposes an improved evolution strategy with crossover operator (ESCO for short) to tackle a combinatorial optimization problem, i.e., constrained circle packing problem. The proposed ESCO extend a canonical ES to deal with combinatorial optimization by employing the crossover operator from genetic algorithm, aiming to exchange the location of circles for obtaining a better packing scheme. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of ESCO compared with genetic algorithm and canonical evolution strategy.