Exploiting development to enhance the scalability of hardware evolution.

Evolutionary algorithms do not scale well to the large, complex circuit design problems typical of the real world. Although techniques based on traditional design decomposition have been proposed to enhance hardware evolution's scalability, they often rely on traditional domain knowledge that may not be appropriate for evolutionary search and might limit evolution's opportunity to innovate. It has been proposed that reliance on such knowledge can be avoided by introducing a model of biological development to the evolutionary algorithm, but this approach has not yet achieved its potential. Prior demonstrations of how development can enhance scalability used toy problems that are not indicative of evolving hardware. Prior attempts to apply development to hardware evolution have rarely been successful and have never explored its effect on scalability in detail. This thesis demonstrates that development can enhance scalability in hardware evolution, primarily through a statistical comparison of hardware evolution's performance with and without development using circuit design problems of various sizes. This is reinforced by proposing and demonstrating three key mechanisms that development uses to enhance scalability: the creation of modules, the reuse of modules, and the discovery of design abstractions. The thesis includes several minor contributions: hardware is evolved using a common reconfigurable architecture at a lower level of abstraction than reported elsewhere. It is shown that this can allow evolution to exploit the architecture more efficiently and perhaps search more effectively. Also the benefits of several features of developmental models are explored through the biases they impose on the evolutionary search. Features that are explored include the type of environmental context development uses and the constraints on symmetry and information transmission they impose, genetic operators that may improve the robustness of gene networks, and how development is mapped to hardware. Also performance is compared against contemporary developmental models

Reuse, Parameterized Reuse, and Hierarchical Reuse of Substructures in Evolving Electrical Circuits Using Genetic Programming

: Most practical electrical circuits contain modular substructures that are repeatedly used to create the overall circuit. Genetic programming with automatically defined functions and architecture-altering operations successfully evolved a design for a two-band crossover (woofer and tweeter) filter with a crossover frequency of 2,512 Hz. Both the topology and the sizing (numerical values) for each component of a the circuit were evolved. In the evolved circuit, three different electrical substructures were used; one was invoked five times; and one was invoked as part of a hierarchy; and one substructure was invoked with different numerical arguments so that different numerical component values were assigned to the substructure's components. 1. Introduction Problems of automatic programming and automated design are replete with regularities, symmetries, homogeneities, and modularities. Practical electrical circuits are replete with modular substructures that are repeatedly used (somet..

Model Order Reduction

An increasing complexity of models used to predict real-world systems leads to the need for algorithms to replace complex models with far simpler ones, while preserving the accuracy of the predictions. This three-volume handbook covers methods as well as applications. This third volume focuses on applications in engineering, biomedical engineering, computational physics and computer science

Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

The Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: automation for Space Station; intelligent control, testing, and fault diagnosis; robotics and vision; planning and scheduling; simulation, modeling, and tutoring; development tools and automatic programming; knowledge representation and acquisition; and knowledge base/data base integration

Large space structures and systems in the space station era: A bibliography with indexes

Bibliographies and abstracts are listed for 1372 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1, 1990 and June 30, 1990. Its purpose is to provide helpful information to the researcher, manager, and designer in technology development and mission design according to system, interactive analysis and design, structural and thermal analysis and design, structural concepts and control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, propulsion, and solar power satellite systems

Electronic instructional materials and course requirements "Computer science" for specialty: 1-53 01 01 «Automation of technological processes and production»

The purpose of the electronic instructional materials and course requirements by the discipline «Computer science» (EIMCR) is to develop theoretical systemic and practical knowledge in different fields of Computer science. Features of structuring and submission of educational material: EIMCR includes the following sections: theoretical, practical, knowledge control, auxiliary. The theoretical section presents lecture material in accordance with the main sections and topics of the syllabus. The practical section of the EIMCR contains materials for conducting practical classes aimed to develop modern computational thinking, basic skills in computing and making decisions in the field of the fundamentals of computer theory and many computer science fields. The knowledge control section of the EIMCR contains: guidelines for the implementation of the control work aimed at developing the skills of independent work on the course under study, developing the skills of selecting, analyzing and writing out the necessary material, as well as the correct execution of the tasks; list of questions for the credit by the discipline. The auxiliary section of the EIMCR contains the following elements of the syllabus: explanatory note; thematic lectures plan; tables of distribution of classroom hours by topics and informational and methodological part. EIMCR contains active links to quickly find the necessary material