DIGNEA: A tool to generate diverse and discriminatory instance suites for optimisation domains

Abstract

To advance research in the development of optimisation algorithms, it is crucial to have access to large test-beds of diverse and discriminatory instances from a domain that can highlight strengths and weaknesses of different algorithms. The DIGNEA tool enables diverse instance suites to be generated for any domain, that are also discriminatory with respect to a set of solvers of the user choice. Written in C++, and delivered as a repository and as a Docker image, its modular and template-based design enables it to be easily adapted to multiple domains and types of solvers with minimal effort. This paper exemplifies how to generate instances for the Knapsack Problem domain.

Keywords

• Instance generation
• Novelty search
• Evolutionary algorithm
• Optimisation
• Knapsack problem