Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Contents
Introduction Brief Overview Who can benefit from GA Applications of Genetic Algorithms
Failure of Standard Genetic Algorithm Evolutionary Divide and Conquer (EDAC) Related Resources Finance Applications Information Systems Applications Production/Operation Applications Role in Decision Making GA's Role Conclusion and Future Work
GA on robot behaviour
GA for Object Localisation in a complex Scene (vision sensory for robot or other devices)
Artificial Life
Written Materials
Books Theses
Academic Papers
Internet
Introduction
Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are adaptive heuristic search algorithm premised on the evolutionary ideas of natural selection and genetic. The basic concept of GAs is designed to simulate processes in natural system necessary for evolution, specifically those that follow the principles first laid down by Charles Darwin of survival of the fittest. As such they represent an intelligent exploitation of a random search within a defined search space to solve a problem. First pioneered by John Holland in the 60s, Genetic Algorithms has been widely studied, experimented and applied in many fields in engineering worlds. Not only does GAs provide an alternative methods to solving problem, it consistently outperforms other traditional methods in most of the problems link. Many of the real world problems involved finding optimal parameters, which might prove difficult for traditional methods but ideal for GAs. However, because of its outstanding performance in optimisation, GAs have been wrongly regarded as a function optimiser. In fact, there are many ways to view genetic algorithms. Perhaps most users come to GAs looking for a problem solver, but this is a restrictive view [ De Jong ,1993 ] . Herein, we will examine GAs as a number of different things: GAs as problem solvers GAs as challenging technical puzzle GAs as basis for competent machine learning GAs as computational model of innovation and creativity GAs as computational model of other innovating systems GAs as guiding philosophy However, due to various constraints, we would only be looking at GAs as pro blem solvers and competent machine learning here. We would also examine how GAs is applied to completely different fields. Many scientists have tried to create living programs. These programs do not merely simulate life but try to exhibit the behaviours and characteristics of a real organisms in an attempt to exist as a form of life. Suggestions have been made that alife would eventually evolve into real life. Such suggestion may sound absurd at the moment but certainly not implausible if technology continues to progress at present rates. Therefore it is worth, in our opinion, taking a paragraph out to discuss how Alife is connected with GAs and see if such a prediction is far fetched and groundless.
Brief Overview
GAs were introduced as a computational analogy of adaptive systems. They are modelled loosely on the principles of the evolution via natural selection, employing a population of individuals that undergo selection in the presence of variation-inducing operators such as mutation and recombination (crossover). A fitness function is used to evaluate individuals, and reproductive success varies with fitness. The Algorithms 1. Randomly generate an initial population M(0) 2. Compute and save the fitness u(m) for each individual m in the current population M(t) 3. Define selection probabilities p(m) for each individual m in M(t) so that p(m) is proportional to u(m) 4. Generate M(t+1) by probabilistically selecting individuals from M(t) to produce offspring via genetic operators 5. Repeat step 2 until satisfying solution is obtained. The paradigm of GAs descibed above is usually the one applied to solving most of the problems presented to GAs. Though it might not find the best solution. more often than not, it would come up with a partially optimal solution.
function, making it easy to adapt the GA scheduler to the particular requirements of a very wide range of possible overall objectives. GAs have been used for problem-solving and for modelling. GAs are applied to many scientific, engineering problems, in business and entertainment, including:
Optimization: GAs have been used in a wide variety of optimisation tasks, including numerical optimisation, and combinatorial optimisation problems such as traveling salesman problem (TSP), circuit design [Louis 1993] , job shop scheduling [Goldstein 1991] and video & sound quality optimisation.
Automatic Programming: GAs have been used to evolve computer programs for specific tasks, and to design other computational structures, for example, cellular automata and sorting networks.
Machine and robot learning: GAs have been used for many machine- learning applications, including classificationa and prediction, and protein structure prediction. GAs have also been used to design neural networks, to evolve rules for learning classifier systems or symbolic production systems, and to design and control robots.
Economic models: GAs have been used to model processes of innovation, the development of bidding strategies, and the emergence of economic markets.
Immune system models: GAs have been used to model various aspects of the natural immune system, including somatic mutation during an individual's lifetime and the discovery of multi-gene families during evolutionary time.
Ecological models: GAs have been used to model ecological phenomena such as biological arms races, host-parasite co-evolutions, symbiosis and resource flow in ecologies.
Population genetics models: GAs have been used to study questions in population genetics, such as "under what conditions will a gene for recombination be evolutionarily viable?"
Interactions between evolution and learning: GAs have been used to study how individual learning and species evolution affect one another.
Models of social systems: GAs have been used to study evolutionary aspects of social systems, such as the evolution of cooperation [Chughtai 1995], the evolution of communication, and trail-following behaviour inants.
Non-permutation matrices represent unrealistic solutions, that is, the GA can generate some chromosomes that do not represent valid solutions. This happens: in the random initialisation step of the GA. as a result of genetic operators (mutation and crossover). Thus, permutation matrices are used. Two tours including the same cities in the same order but with different starting points or different directions are represented by different matrices and hence by different chromosomes, for example: tour (23541) = tour (12354)
An proper fitness function is obtained using penalty-function method to enforce the constraints. However, the ordinary genetic operators generate too many invalid solutions, leading to poor results. Alternative solutions to TSP require new representations ( Position Dependent Representations) and new genetic operators.
dissection algorithms of Richard Karp. Although solution quality tends to be rather poor, Karp`s algorithms possess an attractively simple geometrical approach to dissection, and offer reasonable guarantees of performance. Moreover, EDAC approach is intrinsically parallel. The EDAC approach has lifted the application of GAs to TSP an order or magnitude larger in terms of problem sizes than permutation representations. Experimental results demonstrate the successful properties for EDAC on uniform random points and PCB problems in the range 500 5000 cities.
Finance Applications
Models for tactical asset allocation and international equity strategies have been improved with the use of GAs. They report an 82% improvement in cumulative portfolio value over a passive benchmark model and a 48% improvement over a non-GA model designed to improve over the passive benchmark. Genetic algorithms are particularly well-suited for financial modelling applications for three reasons: 1. They are payoff driven. Payoffs can be improvements in predictive power or returns over a benchmark. There is an excellent match between the tool and the problems addressed.
2. They are inherently quantitative, and well-suited to parameter optimisation (unlike most symbolic machine learning techniques). 3. They are robust, allowing a wide variety of extensions and constraints that cannot be accommodated in traditional methods."
Production/Operation Applications
Genetic Algorithm has been used to schedule jobs in a sequence dependent setup environment for a minimal total tardiness. All jobs are scheduled on a single machine; each job has a processing time and a due date. The setup time of each job is dependent upon the job which immediately precedes it. The GA is able to find good, but not necessarily optimal schedules, fairly quickly. GA is also used to schedule jobs in non-sequence dependent setup environment. The jobs are scheduled on one machine with the objective of minimising the total generally weighted penalty for earliness or tardiness from the jobs' due dates. However, this does not guarantee that it will generate optimal solutions for all schedules. GA is developed for solving the machine-component grouping problem required for cellular manufacturing systems. GA provides a collection of satisfactory solutions for a two objective environment (minimising cell load variation and minimising volume of inter cell movement), allowing the decision maker to then select the best alternative.
Applying the well established decision processing phase model of Simon (1960), Genetic Algorithms appear to be very well suited for supporting the design and choice phases of decision making. In solving a single objective problem, GA designs many solutions until no further improvement (no increase in fitness) can be achieved or some predetermined number of generations have evolved or when the allotted processing time is complete. The most fit solution in the final generation is the one that maximises or minimises the objective (fitness) function; this solution can be thought of as the GA has recommended choice. Therefore with single objective problems the user of GA is assisted in the choice phase of decision processing. When solving multi-objective problems, GA gives out many satisfactory solutions in terms of the objectives, and then allows the decision maker to select the best alternative. Therefore GAs assist with the design phase of decision processing with multi-objective problems. GAs can be of great assistance for examining alternatives since they are designed to evaluate existing potential solutions as well to generate new (and better) solutions for evaluation. Thus GAs can improve the quality of decision making.
Previous studies have shown that knowledge learned under simulation is robust and might be applicable to the real world if the simulation is more general ( add more noise and distortion) . If this is not possible, the differences between the real world and the simulation have to be identified.
GAs' Role
Genetic Alogrithms are adaptive search techniques that can learn high performance knowledge structures. The genetic algorithms' strength come from the implicitly parrallel search of the solution space that it performs via a population of candidate solutions and this population is manipulated in the simulation. The candidate solutions represent every possible behaviour of the robot and based on the overall performance of the candidates, each could be assigned a fitness value. Genetic operators could then be applied to improve the performance of the population of behaviours. One cycle of testing all of the competimg behaviour is defined as a generation, and is repeated until a good behaviours is evolved. The good behaviour is then applied to the real world. Also because of the nature of GA, the initial knowledge does not have to be very good.
In order to provide machines with the ability to interact in complex, real-world environments, sensory data must be presented to the machine. One such module dealing with sensory input is the visual data processing module, also known as the computer vision module. A central task of this computer vision module is to recognise objects from images of the environment. There are two different parts to computer vision modules, namely segmentation and recognition. Segmentation is the process of finding interested objects while recognition works to see if the located object matches the predefined attributes. Since images cannot be recognised until they have been located and separated from the background, it is of paramount importance that this vision module is able to locate different objects of interest for different systems with great efficiency.
GA parameters
The task of locating a particular object of interest in a complex scene is quite simple when cast in the framework of genetic algorithms. The brute force-force method for finding an object in a complex scene is to examine all positions and sizes, with varying degrees of occlusion of the objects, to determine whether the extracted subimage matches a rough notion of what is being sought. This method is immediately dismissed as it is far too computational expensive to achieve. The use of genetic methodology, however, can raise the brute-force setup to an elegant solution to this complex problem. Since the GA approach does well in very large search spaces by working only with a sample available population, the computational limitation of the brute-force method using full search space enumeration does not apply. An experiment was actually carried out based on the following technique, GAs optimised for Portability and Parallelism developed at Michigan State University.
Full paper
Artificial Life
Genetic algorithms are currently the most prominent and widely used computational models of evolution in artificial-life systems. This decentralised models provide a basis for understanding many other systems and phenomena in the world. Researches on GAs in alife give
illustrative examples in which the genetic algorithm is used to study how learning and evolution interact, and to model ecosystems, immune system, cognitive systems, and social systems.
Alife on Telecommunication
In the rapidly converging telecommunications industry, technology never stops changing. To assist telecom managers in adapting and prospering during this turbulent period, a businesssimulation program, TeleSim, is developed, using artificial life approach. This training tool is designed to provide thought leadership and training for managers facing the challenges of a rapidly changing marketplace. A TeleSim player acts as a manager in a telecommunications company and pilots the company through a simulated marketplace testing various scenarios and the impact on operations, competitor response and customer behaviour. The player confronts with internal staff communications, regulatory penalties, natural disasters, and financial/ technological trade-offs similar to those that managers face in the real world. In this virtual telecommunications marketplace, the TeleSim player faces seven competitors, which are modelled using adaptive agent technology. The competitive agents interact, adapt to each other, and to the decisions of the player. The competitors learn to execute the best strategic moves as they adapt to the ever changing environment. This emerging and evolving world involves convergence in technology as well as changes in the market and regulations, demonstrating some self-organising behaviours. Simulations let people experience and think through the complexity of the business situation and make experiments that they could not possibly do in the real world. People learn to make decisions and gain a better understanding of what present management has been doing. TeleSim allows for a more interactive computerbased approach to scenario development and strategic planning. TeleSim simulates telecommunications businesses, designed as a tool for business planning and management training. In TeleSim, the player learns to develop strategic
plans to assess market opportunities and determine an organisation's capability for pursuing the dynamics of its strategic direction.
Supporters of strong a-life obviously think otherwise. One of the more prominent supporter, Christopher Langton , writes that the artificial life created do not live in the medium as we know. It is in a virtual medium where they reside. He further argues that models built could be so real that they would cease to be models of life and become examples of life themselves. He claims that any definition or list of criteria broad enough to include all known biological life will also include certain classes of computer processs and therefore will have to be considered as "actually alive".
Conclusion
If the conception of a computer algorithms being based on the evolutionary of organism is surprising, the extensiveness with which this algorithms is applied in so many areas is no less than astounishing. These applications, be they commercial, educational and scientific, are increasingly dependent on this algorithms, the Genetic Algorithms. Its usefulness and gracefulness of solving problems has made it the a more favourite choice among the traditional methods, namely gradient search, random search and others. GAs are very helpful when the developer does not have precise domain expertise, because GAs possess the ability to explore and learn from their domain. In this report, we have placed more emphasis in explaining the use of GAs in many areas of engineering and commerce. We believe that, through working out these interesting examples, one could grasp the idea of GAs with greater ease. We have also discuss the uncertainties about whether computer generated life could exist as real life form. The discussion is far from conclusive and ,whether artificial life will become real life, will remain to be seen. In future, we would witness some developments of variants of GAs to tailor for some very specific tasks. This might defy the very principle of GAs that it is ignorant of the problem domain when used to solve problem. But we would realize that this practice could make GAs even more powerful.
References
Written Materials
Books
Genetic Algorithms in Engineering and Computer Science , edited by G.Winter, J.Periaux & M.Galan, published by JOHN WILEY & SON Ltd. in 1995. Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (3 Computing 5.25 FOU) Usefulness : 9 Readability : 8
[Louis 1993] Genetic Algorithms as a Computational Tool for Design, by Sushil J. Louis, in August 1993 Obtained : internet Usefulness : 9 Readability : 7 Foundatiions of Genetic Algorithms Volume 3, by L.Darrell Whitley & Michael D.Vose, in 1995 published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc. Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (3 Computing 5.25 FOU) Usefulness : 7 Readability : 6 Algorithms and Complexity, by Herbert S.Wilf, in 1986 published by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (3 Computing 5.25 WIL) Usefulness : 6 Readability : 6 Recombination Variability and Evolution : algorithms of estimation and populationgenetic models, by A.B.Korol, I.A.Preygel & S.I.Preygel, in 1994 published by Chapman & Hall. Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (4 Life Sciences 575.116.12 KOR) Usefulness : 3 Readability : 5
Theses
[Chughtai 1995] Determining Economic Equilibria using Genetic Algorithms, by Meliha Chughtai, in September 1995 published by Imperial College Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (2 Info. Desk MSc 1995) Usefulness : 9 Readability : 10 Other Comments : It is very easy to understand and good for beginners. [Valenzuela 1995] Evolutionary Divide and Conquer : a novel genetic approach to the TSP , by Christine L.Valenzuela, in 28 June 1995 published by Imperial College Obtained : Supervisor (Sophia Drossopoulou) Usefulness : 9 Readability : 10 Other Comments : Several approaches (GA & heuristics) to TSP are addressed. Learning Robot Behaviours using Genetic Algorithms , by ALAN C.Schultz. Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intellignece. Obtained : web page Usefulness : 8 Readability : 8 [Goldstein 1991] Genetic Algorithm Simulation of the SHOP Scheduling Problem, by Jonathan M.Goldstein, in September 1991 published by An ICMS/Shell Oil Business Consultancy Obtained : Central Library of Imperial College (4 Management Thesis) Usefulness : 7
Readability : 8 Other Comments : Many interesting and useful applications of GAs. Shown how powerful GAs could be.
Genetic Algorithms for Order Dependent Processes applied to Robot Path-Planning, by Yuval Davidor, in April 1989 published by Imperial College Obtained : Mechanical Engineering Library of Imperial College (Library Store) Usefulness : 6 Readability : 7
Academic Papers
Genetic Algorithms and Arfificial Life, by Melanie Mitchell and Stephanie Forrest, in 1993. Obtained : web page Usefulness : 10 Readability : 8 Genetic Algorithms and Protein Structure Prediction, by Mehul M.Khimasia Obtained : web page Usefulness : 9 Readability : 8 Genetic Algorithms for Object Localization in a Complex Scene, by Daniel L.Swets and Bill Punch. Obtained : web page Usefulness : 9 Readability : 9 Genetic Algorithms in Business and Their Supportive Role in Decision Making, by Tom Bodnovich, in 16 November 1995, published by College of Business Administration Kent State University. Obtained : web page Usefulness : 10 Readability : 9 Other Comments : This paper is very clear and useful.
Technical Report
An Introduction to GALOPPS: The "Genetci Algorithm Optimized for Portability and Parallelism" System, by Erik D.Goodman, in 4 November 1994, published by Intelligent Systems Laboratory of Michigan State University, East Lansing. Obtained : web page Usefulness : 9 Readability : 9
Internet
Introduction To Genetic Algorithms Axcelis (http://www.axcelis.com:80/articles/itga/application.html) Contents : applications of Genetic Algorithms Usefulness : 10 Other Comments : Most applications are very interesting. Surprise Home Page (http://www-dse.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise.html) Contents : a brilliant new electronic journal in Information Systems Engineering Usefulness : 10 Coopers & Lybrand L.L.P. - TeleSim (http://www.colybrand.com/clc/telwww0.html) Contents : an overview of TeleSim, a business simulation program Usefulness : 9
GA White Paper (http://www.manmach.com/information/white.html) Contents : an introduction to Genetic Algorithm implementation, theory, application, history and future potential Usefulness : 9 GATSS GA Traveling Salesman Solver (http://www.ts.umu.se/~top/travel.html) Contents : a demonstration of solutions to TSP, using GA Usefulness : 9 Other Comments : It is easy to use, but rather time-consuming. Telesim: Making a Samrt Simulation (http://www.hyperstand.com/SITE/NMToday/1025/Telesim_Simulation.html ) Contents : background and discussion of TeleSim Usefulness : 9 SimAnt (http://cypher.turbonet.com/games/1title/s/simant/simant.htm) Contents : a description of the Electronic Ant Colony Usefulness : 8 Other Comments : It is funny. Solving TSP with Standard GA (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rmp/slide_book/node36.html) Contents : standard Genetic Algorithm approach to Travelling Salesman Problem Usefulness : 8 Traveling Salesman Problem (http://www.dk-online.dk/users/hagerup/java/tstdk.htm) Contents : a TSP Jave applet Usefulness : 8 Other Comments : It is interesting, but slow. World-Record Traveling Salesman Problem for Solved (http://nhse.cs.rice.edu/CRPC/newsletters/jan93/news.tsp.html) Contents : TSP with 3038 cities Usefulness : 8 3038 Cities
The Traveling Salesman Problem (http://rodin.wustl.edu/~kevin/dissert/node11.html) Contents : an introduction to TSP Usefulness : 7 Other Comments : It is not quite easy, as mathematics are involved.