Kit Sang Tang

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, . . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The emerging technologies in control include fuzzy logic, intelligent control, neural networks and hardware developments like micro-electro-mechanical systems and autonomous vehicles. This volume describes the biological background, basic construction and application of the emerging technology of Genetic Algorithms. Dr Kim Man and his colleagues have written a book which is both a primer introducing the basic concepts and a research text which describes some of the more advanced applications of the genetic algorithmic method. The applications described are especially useful since they indicate the power of the GA method in solving a wide range of problems. These sections are also instructive in showing how the mechanics of the GA solutions are obtained thereby acting as a template for similar types of problems. The volume is a very welcome contribution to the Advances in Industrial Control Series. M. J. Grimble and M. A.

Genetic Algorithms (GA) as a tool for a search and optimizing methodology has now reached a mature stage. It has found many useful applications in both the scientific and engineering arenas. The main reason for this success is undoubtedly due to the advances that have been made in solid-state microelectronics fabrication that have, in turn, led to the proliferation of widely available, low cost, and speedy computers. The GA works on the Darwinian principle of natural selection for which the noted English philosopher, Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "Survival of the fittest". As a numerical optimizer, the solutions obtained by the GA are not mathematically oriented. Instead, GA possesses an intrinsic flexibility and the freedom to choose desirable optima according to design specifications. Whether the criteria of concern be nonlinear, constrained, discrete, multimodal, or NP hard, the GA is entirely equal to the challenge. In fact, because of the uniqueness of the evolutionary process and the gene structure of a chromosome, the GA processing mechanism can take the form ofparallelism and multiobjective. These provide an extra dimension for solutions where other techniques may have failed completely. It is, therefore, the aim ofthis booktogather together relevant GA materialthat has already been used and demonstrated in various engineering disciplines.