ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the physics of gravity, mass of moving objects, and acceleration of objects that encompass the gravitational search algorithm (GSA). It discusses the parameters of the GSA and fitness evaluation. Parameter identification is to find the best possible values for the set of parameters by minimizing an objective function. The chapter also presents the different variants of the GSA and finally a few applications to engineering problems. In order to compute the mass, an elegant fitness mechanism is devised in the GSA so that they can be ranked only with respect to their fitness. The gravitational and inertial masses are determined by evaluating a fitness function. Scaling or readjustment of fitness values is sometimes useful to sustain a steady exploration or selective pressure on the population. A detailed description of different approaches and methods on the design, optimization, and tuning of the fuzzy controller using EAs can be found in Siddique and Adeli and Siddique.
