  VEGAS (Varying Evolvability-Guided Adaptive Search) is a new methodology
proposed to deal with the neutrality property of some optimization problems. ts
main feature is to consider the whole neutral network rather than an arbitrary
solution. Moreover, VEGAS is designed to escape from plateaus based on the
evolvability of solution and a multi-armed bandit. Experiments are conducted on
NK-landscapes with neutrality. Results show the importance of considering the
whole neutral network and of guiding the search cleverly. The impact of the
level of neutrality and of the exploration-exploitation trade-off are deeply
analyzed.
