Computational Intelligence: Engineering of Hybrid Systems

Hybrid Intelligent Systems has become an important research topic in computer science and a key application field in science and engineering. This book offers a gentle introduction to the engineering aspects of hybrid intelligent systems, also emphasizing the interrelation with the main intelligent technologies such as genetic algorithms – evolutionary computation, neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolvable hardware, DNA computing, artificial immune systems. A unitary whole of theory and application, the book provides readers with the fundamentals, background information, and practical methods for building a hybrid intelligent system. It treats a panoply of applications, including many in industry, educational systems, forecasting, financial engineering, and bioinformatics. This volume is useful to newcomers in the field because it quickly familiarizes them with engineering elements of developing hybrid intelligent systems and a wide range of real applications, including non-industrial applications. Researchers, developers and technically oriented managers can use the book for developing both new hybrid intelligent systems approaches and new applications requiring the hybridization of the typical tools and concepts to computational intelligence.

The Soft Computing framework or Computational Intelligence with its large variety of efficient applications is hugely fascinating. Problems in engineering, computational science and the physical and biological sciences are using the increasingly sophisticated methods of Computational Intelligence. Because of the high interdisciplinary requirements featuring most real-world applications, no bridge exists between the different stand alone Intelligent Technologies, namely Fuzzy Systems, Neural Networks, Evolutionary Algorithms, DNA Computing, Artificial Immune Systems and Knowledge Based Systems. The concomitant increase in dialogue and interconnection between the Intelligent Technologies has led to Computational Intelligence and its practical implementation – the Hybrid Intelligent Systems. The idea of writing a book on this topic first crossed my mind in 1996, and I am really happy that the book is finally complete.

Initially I thought this book would be of real help to my gifted students at the Department of Applied Electronics and at the Department of Automatics in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Navy of the University “Dunarea de Jos” Galati, Romania. New ideas and suggestions regarding the final structure of the book were obtained from students attending my course on Intelligent Multi-Agent Hybrid Systems at Wellington Institute of Technology, New Zealand. They were really pleased to become familiar with the Intelligent Technologies and with some typical competitive software, such as Neural Network Professional II Plus and Soft Computing Genetic Tool. Their interest in this area gave me the stimulus to finish the book. My intention was to be helpful to the students, not to exempt them from intellectual effort, but to put as much illustrative information as possible into the book. The purpose was to create a very clear image of what Computational Intelligence is in general terms, and to convince them that Hybrid Intelligent Systems are really nothing else but the engineering implementation of Computational Intelligence.