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Section: New Software and Platforms

COCO

COmparing Continuous Optimizers

Keywords: Benchmarking - Numerical optimization - Black-box optimization - Stochastic optimization

Scientific Description: COmparing Continuous Optimisers (COCO) is a tool for benchmarking algorithms for black-box optimisation. COCO facilitates systematic experimentation in the field of continuous optimization. COCO provides: (1) an experimental framework for testing the algorithms, (2) post-processing facilities for generating publication quality figures and tables, including the easy integration of data from benchmarking experiments of 300+ algorithm variants, (3) LaTeX templates for scientific articles and HTML overview pages which present the figures and tables.

The COCO software is composed of two parts: (i) an interface available in different programming languages (C/C++, Java, Matlab/Octave, Python, external support for R) which allows to run and log experiments on several function test suites (unbounded noisy and noiseless single-objective functions, unbounded noiseless multiobjective problems, constrained problems) are provided (ii) a Python tool for generating figures and tables that can be looked at in every web browser and that can be used in the provided LaTeX templates to write scientific papers.

Functional Description: The Coco platform aims at supporting the numerical benchmarking of blackbox optimization algorithms in continuous domains. Benchmarking is a vital part of algorithm engineering and a necessary path to recommend algorithms for practical applications. The Coco platform releases algorithm developers and practitioners alike from (re-)writing test functions, logging, and plotting facilities by providing an easy-to-handle interface in several programming languages. The Coco platform has been developed since 2007 and has been used extensively within the “Blackbox Optimization Benchmarking (BBOB)” workshop series since 2009. Overall, 300+ algorithms and algorithm variants by contributors from all over the world have been benchmarked on the platform's supported test suites so far. The most recent extension has been towards large-scale problems and was used for the BBOB-2019 workshop at the ACM-GECCO conference.

  • Participants: Anne Auger, Asma Atamna, Dejan Tusar, Dimo Brockhoff, Marc Schoenauer, Nikolaus HANSEN, Ouassim Ait Elhara, Raymond Ros, Tea Tusar, Thanh-Do Tran, Umut Batu and Konstantinos Varelas

  • Partners: TU Dortmund University - Charles University Prague - Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI)

  • Contact: Dimo Brockhoff

  • URL: https://github.com/numbbo/coco