Quotient Geometric Crossovers

Geometric crossover is a representation-independent definition of crossover based on the distance of the search space interpreted as a metric space. It generalizes the traditional crossover for binary strings and other important recombination operators for the most frequently used representations. Using a distance tailored to the problem at hand, the abstract definition of crossover can be used to design new problem specific crossovers that embed problem knowledge in the search. In previous work we have started studying how metric transformations of the distance associated with geometric crossover affect the original geometric crossover. In particular, we focused on the product of metric spaces. This metric transformation gives rise to the notion of product geometric crossover that allows to build new geometric crossovers combining pre-existing geometric crossovers in a simple way. In this paper, we study another metric transformation, the quotient metric space, that gives rise to the notion of quotient geometric crossover. This turns out to be a very versatile notion. We give many examples of application of the quotient geometric crossover.