Hyper-heuristics comprise a set of approaches that are motivated (at least in part) by the goal of automating the design of heuristic methods to solve hard computational search problems. An underlying strategic research challenge is to develop more generally applicable search methodologies. The term hyper-heuristic is relatively new; it was first used in 2000 to describe heuristics to choose heuristics in the context of combinatorial optimisation. However, the idea of automating the design of heuristics is not new; it can be traced back to the 1960s. The definition of hyper-heuristics has been recently extended to refer to a search method or learning mechanism for selecting or generating heuristics to solve computational search problems. Two main hyper-heuristic categories can be considered: heuristic selection and heuristic generation. The distinguishing feature of hyper-heuristics is that they operate on a search space of heuristics (or heuristic components) rather than directly on the search space of solutions to the underlying problem that is being addressed. This paper presents a critical discussion of the scientific literature on hyper-heuristics including their origin and intellectual roots, a detailed account of the main types of approaches, and an overview of some related areas. Current research trends and directions for future research are also discussed

A new optimization method has been proposed by Kennedy et. al. in [7, 8], called Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). This approach combines social psychology principles in socio-cognition of human,(and artificial) agents and evolutionary computation. It has been successfully applied to nonlinear function optimization and neural network training. Preliminary formal analyses for a simple PSO system show that a particle in a simple PSO system follows a path defined by a sinusoidal wave, randomly deciding on both its amplitude and frequency [12]. This paper takes the next step, generalizing to obtain closed form equations for trajectories of particles in a multi-dimensional search space.

Meta-heuristics such as simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and tabu search have been successfully applied to many difficult optimization problems for which no satisfactory problem specific solution exists. However, expertise is required to adopt