Book excerpt: This book addresses the frontier advances in the theory and application of nature-inspired optimization techniques, including solving the quadratic assignment problem, prediction in nature-inspired dynamic optimization, the lion algorithm and its applications, optimizing the operation scheduling of microgrids, PID controllers for two-legged robots, optimizing crane operating times, planning electrical energy distribution systems, automatic design and evaluation of classification pipelines, and optimizing wind-energy power generation plants. The book also presents a variety of nature-inspired methods and illustrates methods of adapting these to said applications. Nature-inspired computation, developed by mimicking natural phenomena, makes a significant contribution toward the solution of non-convex optimization problems that normal mathematical optimizers fail to solve. As such, a wide range of nature-inspired computing approaches has been used in multidisciplinary engineering applications. Written by researchers and developers from a variety of fields, this book presents the latest findings, novel techniques and pioneering applications.