Simplification of genetic programs: a literature survey

Genetic programming (GP), a widely used evolutionary computing technique, suffers from bloat—the problem of excessive growth in individuals’ sizes. As a result, its ability to efficiently explore complex search spaces reduces. The resulting solutions are less robust and generalisable. Moreover, it is difficult to understand and explain models which contain bloat. This phenomenon is well researched, primarily from the angle of controlling bloat: instead, our focus in this paper is to review the literature from an explainability point of view, by looking at how simplification can make GP models more explainable by reducing their sizes. Simplification is a code editing technique whose primary purpose is to make GP models more explainable. However, it can offer bloat control as an additional benefit when implemented and applied with caution. Researchers have proposed several simplification techniques and adopted various strategies to implement them. We organise the literature along multiple axes to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of simplification techniques and to identify emerging trends and areas for future exploration. We highlight design and integration challenges and propose several avenues for research. One of them is to consider simplification as a standalone operator, rather than an extension of the standard crossover or mutation operators. Its role is then more clearly complementary to other GP operators, and it can be integrated as an optional feature into an existing GP setup. Another proposed avenue is to explore the lack of utilisation of complexity measures in simplification. So far, size is the most discussed measure, with only two pieces of prior work pointing out the benefits of using time as a measure when controlling bloat

Late-Breaking Papers of EuroGP-99

This booklet contains the late-breaking papers of the Second European Workshop on Genetic Programming (EuroGP’99) held in G"oteborg Sweden 26–27 May 1999. EuroGP’99 was one of the EvoNet workshops on evolutionary computing, EvoWorkshops’99. The purpose of the late-breaking papers was to provide attendees with information about research that was initiated, enhanced, improved, or completed after the original paper submission deadline in December 1998. To ensure coverage of the most up-to-date research, the deadline for submission was set only a month before the workshop. Late-breaking papers were examined for relevance and quality by the organisers of the EuroGP’99, but no formal review process took place. The 3 late-breaking papers in this booklet (which was distributed at the workshop) were presented during a poster session held on Thursday 27 May 1999 during EuroGP’99. Authors individually retain copyright (and all other rights) to their late-breaking papers. This booklet is available as a technical report SEN-R9913 from Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Kruislaan 413, NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam http://www.cwi.nl/static/publications/reports/reports.htm

Evolution of Control Programs for a Swarm of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly becoming a critical military asset. In the future, advances in miniaturization are going to drive the development of insect size UAVs. New approaches to controlling these swarms are required. The goal of this research is to develop a controller to direct a swarm of UAVs in accomplishing a given mission. While previous efforts have largely been limited to a two-dimensional model, a three-dimensional model has been developed for this project. Models of UAV capabilities including sensors, actuators and communications are presented. Genetic programming uses the principles of Darwinian evolution to generate computer programs to solve problems. A genetic programming approach is used to evolve control programs for UAV swarms. Evolved controllers are compared with a hand-crafted solution using quantitative and qualitative methods. Visualization and statistical methods are used to analyze solutions. Results indicate that genetic programming is capable of producing effective solutions to multi-objective control problems