Evolutionary Systems
Computational Chemotaxis in Ants and Bacteria over Dynamic Environments
Ramos, Vitorino, Fernandes, C. M., Rosa, A. C., Abraham, A.
Chemotaxis can be defined as an innate behavioural response by an organism to a directional stimulus, in which bacteria, and other single-cell or multicellular organisms direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment. This is important for bacteria to find food (e.g., glucose) by swimming towards the highest concentration of food molecules, or to flee from poisons. Based on self-organized computational approaches and similar stigmergic concepts we derive a novel swarm intelligent algorithm. What strikes from these observations is that both eusocial insects as ant colonies and bacteria have similar natural mechanisms based on stigmergy in order to emerge coherent and sophisticated patterns of global collective behaviour. Keeping in mind the above characteristics we will present a simple model to tackle the collective adaptation of a social swarm based on real ant colony behaviors (SSA algorithm) for tracking extrema in dynamic environments and highly multimodal complex functions described in the well-know De Jong test suite. Later, for the purpose of comparison, a recent model of artificial bacterial foraging (BFOA algorithm) based on similar stigmergic features is described and analyzed. Final results indicate that the SSA collective intelligence is able to cope and quickly adapt to unforeseen situations even when over the same cooperative foraging period, the community is requested to deal with two different and contradictory purposes, while outperforming BFOA in adaptive speed. Results indicate that the present approach deals well in severe Dynamic Optimization problems.
Effective linkage learning using low-order statistics and clustering
Emmendorfer, Leonardo, Pozo, Aurora
The adoption of probabilistic models for the best individuals found so far is a powerful approach for evolutionary computation. Increasingly more complex models have been used by estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs), which often result better effectiveness on finding the global optima for hard optimization problems. Supervised and unsupervised learning of Bayesian networks are very effective options, since those models are able to capture interactions of high order among the variables of a problem. Diversity preservation, through niching techniques, has also shown to be very important to allow the identification of the problem structure as much as for keeping several global optima. Recently, clustering was evaluated as an effective niching technique for EDAs, but the performance of simpler low-order EDAs was not shown to be much improved by clustering, except for some simple multimodal problems. This work proposes and evaluates a combination operator guided by a measure from information theory which allows a clustered low-order EDA to effectively solve a comprehensive range of benchmark optimization problems.
Optimal Design of Ad Hoc Injection Networks by Using Genetic Algorithms
Danoy, Gregoire, Bouvry, Pascal, Brust, Matthias R., Alba, Enrique
This work aims at optimizing injection networks, which consist in adding a set of long-range links (called bypass links) in mobile multi-hop ad hoc networks so as to improve connectivity and overcome network partitioning. To this end, we rely on small-world network properties, that comprise a high clustering coefficient and a low characteristic path length. We investigate the use of two genetic algorithms (generational and steady-state) to optimize three instances of this topology control problem and present results that show initial evidence of their capacity to solve it.
Using Genetic Algorithms to Optimise Rough Set Partition Sizes for HIV Data Analysis
Crossingham, Bodie, Marwala, Tshilidzi
In this paper, we present a method to optimise rough set partition sizes, to which rule extraction is performed on HIV data. The genetic algorithm optimisation technique is used to determine the partition sizes of a rough set in order to maximise the rough sets prediction accuracy. The proposed method is tested on a set of demographic properties of individuals obtained from the South African antenatal survey. Six demographic variables were used in the analysis, these variables are; race, age of mother, education, gravidity, parity, and age of father, with the outcome or decision being either HIV positive or negative. Rough set theory is chosen based on the fact that it is easy to interpret the extracted rules. The prediction accuracy of equal width bin partitioning is 57.7% while the accuracy achieved after optimising the partitions is 72.8%. Several other methods have been used to analyse the HIV data and their results are stated and compared to that of rough set theory (RST).
Ensemble Learning for Free with Evolutionary Algorithms ?
Gagnรฉ, Christian, Sebag, Michรจle, Schoenauer, Marc, Tomassini, Marco
Evolutionary Learning proceeds by evolving a population of classifiers, from which it generally returns (with some notable exceptions) the single best-of-run classifier as final result. In the meanwhile, Ensemble Learning, one of the most efficient approaches in supervised Machine Learning for the last decade, proceeds by building a population of diverse classifiers. Ensemble Learning with Evolutionary Computation thus receives increasing attention. The Evolutionary Ensemble Learning (EEL) approach presented in this paper features two contributions. First, a new fitness function, inspired by co-evolution and enforcing the classifier diversity, is presented. Further, a new selection criterion based on the classification margin is proposed. This criterion is used to extract the classifier ensemble from the final population only (Off-line) or incrementally along evolution (On-line). Experiments on a set of benchmark problems show that Off-line outperforms single-hypothesis evolutionary learning and state-of-art Boosting and generates smaller classifier ensembles.
An Adaptive Strategy for the Classification of G-Protein Coupled Receptors
Mohamed, S., Rubin, D., Marwala, T.
One of the major problems in computational biology is the inability of existing classification models to incorporate expanding and new domain knowledge. This problem of static classification models is addressed in this paper by the introduction of incremental learning for problems in bioinformatics. Many machine learning tools have been applied to this problem using static machine learning structures such as neural networks or support vector machines that are unable to accommodate new information into their existing models. We utilize the fuzzy ARTMAP as an alternate machine learning system that has the ability of incrementally learning new data as it becomes available. The fuzzy ARTMAP is found to be comparable to many of the widespread machine learning systems. The use of an evolutionary strategy in the selection and combination of individual classifiers into an ensemble system, coupled with the incremental learning ability of the fuzzy ARTMAP is proven to be suitable as a pattern classifier. The algorithm presented is tested using data from the G-Coupled Protein Receptors Database and shows good accuracy of 83%. The system presented is also generally applicable, and can be used in problems in genomics and proteomics.
Architecture for Pseudo Acausal Evolvable Embedded Systems
Advances in semiconductor technology are contributing to the increasing complexity in the design of embedded systems. Architectures with novel techniques such as evolvable nature and autonomous behavior have engrossed lot of attention. This paper demonstrates conceptually evolvable embedded systems can be characterized basing on acausal nature. It is noted that in acausal systems, future input needs to be known, here we make a mechanism such that the system predicts the future inputs and exhibits pseudo acausal nature. An embedded system that uses theoretical framework of acausality is proposed. Our method aims at a novel architecture that features the hardware evolability and autonomous behavior alongside pseudo acausality. Various aspects of this architecture are discussed in detail along with the limitations.
Automatically Generating Game Tactics through Evolutionary Learning
Ponsen, Marc, Munoz-Avila, Hector, Spronck, Pieter, Aha, David W.
The decision-making process of computer-controlled opponents in video games is called game AI. Adaptive game AI can improve the entertainment value of games by allowing computer-controlled opponents to ix weaknesses automatically in the game AI and to respond to changes in human-player tactics. Dynamic scripting is a reinforcement learning approach to adaptive game AI that learns, during gameplay, which game tactics an opponent should select to play effectively. In previous work, the tactics used by dynamic scripting were designed manually. We introduce the evolutionary state-based tactics generator (ESTG), which uses an evolutionary algorithm to generate tactics automatically. Experimental results show that ESTG improves dynamic scripting's performance in a real-time strategy game. We conclude that high-quality domain knowledge can be automatically generated for strong adaptive game AI opponents. Game developers can bene it from applying ESTG, as it considerably reduces the time and effort needed to create adaptive game AI.
On Self-Regulated Swarms, Societal Memory, Speed and Dynamics
Ramos, Vitorino, Fernandes, Carlos, Rosa, Agostinho C.
Wasps, bees, ants and termites all make effective use of their environment and resources by displaying collective "swarm" intelligence. Termite colonies - for instance - build nests with a complexity far beyond the comprehension of the individual termite, while ant colonies dynamically allocate labor to various vital tasks such as foraging or defense without any central decision-making ability. Recent research suggests that microbial life can be even richer: highly social, intricately networked, and teeming with interactions, as found in bacteria. What strikes from these observations is that both ant colonies and bacteria have similar natural mechanisms based on Stigmergy and Self-Organization in order to emerge coherent and sophisticated patterns of global foraging behavior. Keeping in mind the above characteristics we propose a Self-Regulated Swarm (SRS) algorithm which hybridizes the advantageous characteristics of Swarm Intelligence as the emergence of a societal environmental memory or cognitive map via collective pheromone laying in the landscape (properly balancing the exploration/exploitation nature of our dynamic search strategy), with a simple Evolutionary mechanism that trough a direct reproduction procedure linked to local environmental features is able to self-regulate the above exploratory swarm population, speeding it up globally.
ATNoSFERES revisited
Landau, Samuel, Sigaud, Olivier, Schoenauer, Marc
ATNoSFERES is a Pittsburgh style Learning Classifier System (LCS) in which the rules are represented as edges of an Augmented Transition Network. Genotypes are strings of tokens of a stack-based language, whose execution builds the labeled graph. The original ATNoSFERES, using a bitstring to represent the language tokens, has been favorably compared in previous work to several Michigan style LCSs architectures in the context of Non Markov problems. Several modifications of ATNoSFERES are proposed here: the most important one conceptually being a representational change: each token is now represented by an integer, hence the genotype is a string of integers; several other modifications of the underlying grammar language are also proposed. The resulting ATNoSFERES-II is validated on several standard animat Non Markov problems, on which it outperforms all previously published results in the LCS literature. The reasons for these improvement are carefully analyzed, and some assumptions are proposed on the underlying mechanisms in order to explain these good results.