Comparing evolutionary hybrid systems for design and optimization of multilayer perceptron structure along training parameters

In this paper, we present a comparative study of several methods that combine evolutionary algorithms and local search methods to optimize multilayer perceptrons: A method that optimizes the architecture and initial weights of multilayer perceptrons; another that searches for training algorithm parameters, and finally, a co-evolutionary algorithm, introduced in this paper, that handles the architecture, the network’s initial weights and the training algorithm parameters. Our aim is to determine how the co-evolutive method can obtain better results from the point of view of running time and classification ability. Experimental results show that the co-evolutionary method obtains similar or better results than the other approaches, requiring far less training epochs and thus, reducing running time.