HeuristicLab

HeuristicLab is an open source system for heuristic optimization that features several metaheuristic optimization algorithms (e.g., genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, tabu search, simulated annealing) as well as several optimization problems (e.g., traveling salesman, regression, classification, vehicle routing, knapsack, simulation-based optimization). It is developed by the research group Heuristic and Evolutionary Algorithms Laboratory (HEAL) of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and is based on C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework. HeuristicLab is used as development platform for several research and industry projects (for example the Josef Ressel Centre Heureka! or the K-Projekt HOPL) as well as for teaching metaheuristics in the study programs Software Engineering and Medical- and Bioinformatics. Over the years HeuristicLab has become more and more known within the metaheuristic optimization community and is used by researchers and lecturers at different universities.

HeuristicLab is released under the GNU General Public License. Some of the main features of HeuristicLab are:

* comfortable and feature rich graphical user interface
* experiment designer to create and execute a large number of test runs
* graphical analysis and comparison of parameters and results
* graphical algorithm designer to create or modify algorithms
* plug-in based architecture which enables an easy integration of new algorithms and problems
* generic and flexible algorithm and data model
* generic interface to couple HeuristicLab with other applications
* parallel and/or distributed execution of algorithms on multi-core or cluster systems