ABSTRACT
In this century, technology is ubiquitous. Much of the innovations taking place today are inspired by a need to automate human processes and make life simpler. Nowadays, most of the technological innovations taking place are a direct consequence of advances in soft computing paradigm. Roughly put, soft computing basically refers to utilization of inexact solutions to get the solution of complex problems (such as NP-Hard problems) for which there is no known algorithm in existence. Soft computing differs signicantly from conventional (hard) computing techniques in the fact that it is tolerant to imprecision and uncertainty that can occur in the problem or its solution. Generally, soft computing algorithms are nature-inspired algorithms in a sense that they somehow mimic the natural processes. Phenomena such as behavior of bees, movement of ants, and so on, can be very effectively modeled by using soft computing techniques. The same approaches can also be used to solve similar problems occurring in engineering and management domains.
