Abstract
This paper examines the effect of mating restriction on the search ability of EMO algorithms. First we propose a simple but flexible mating restriction scheme where a pair of similar (or dissimilar) individuals is selected as parents. Next we examine the effect of mating restriction on the search ability of EMO algorithms through computational experiments on small and large test problems using the SPEA and the NSGA-II. Empirical results reported in this paper suggest that the proposed mating restriction scheme can improve the performance of EMO algorithms for many test problems while its effect is problem-dependent and algorithm-dependent.
