How to get initial and successive populations in GA optimization ?

I want to use GA in integartion with external simulation software. How can I access the initial population created by GA as well as suceesive populations so that these can be send to the external simulation software to evaluate objective function?

Answer 1

[Shreeya]

The “InitialPopulationMatrix” parameter of the “optimoptions’ can be used to create an initial population.

options = optimoptions('ga', ‘InitialPopulationMatrix’, []);

You can refer to the population options of this function in this link:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/gads/genetic-algorithm-options.html#f14223

Further, to access the population being generated in each iteration, refer the page linked below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/gads/custom-output-function-for-genetic-algorithm.html#d126e23519

The custom output function plots the population values being generated with each iteration and saves it to the base workspace which can be used in external simulation software.