New requirements for off-line parameter calibration algorithms

The process of designing an evolutionary algorithm requires the definition of an adequate representation, a set of components as operators, parameters and parameters values. In practice, some operators can not be helping the evolutionary algorithm to perform his work, thus we require to be able to detect these situations. In this paper we are interested on analyzing the capabilities of off-line calibration techniques, originally designed to tune parameter values, to recognize situations more related to the design process of an evolutionary algorithm. We experimentally analyze the results of the off-line calibration techniques on some specific situations. For that purpose we use some specially designed operators for an evolutionary algorithm which solves the traveling salesman problem.