Determining Optimal Architecture of CNN using Genetic Algorithm for Vehicle Classification System

 Convolutional neural network is a machine learning that provides a good accura-cy for many problems in the field of computer vision, such as segmentation, de-tection, recognition, as well as classification systems. However, the results and performance of the system are affected by the CNN architecture. In this paper, we propose the utilization of evolutionary computation using genetic algorithm to de-termine the optimal architecture for CNN with transfer learning strategy from parent network. Furthermore, the optimal CNN produced is used as a model for the case of the vehicle type classification system. To evaluate the effectiveness of the utilization of evolutionary computing to CNN, the experiment will be conducted using vehicle classification datasets

Relatedness Measures to Aid the Transfer of Building Blocks among Multiple Tasks

Multitask Learning is a learning paradigm that deals with multiple different tasks in parallel and transfers knowledge among them. XOF, a Learning Classifier System using tree-based programs to encode building blocks (meta-features), constructs and collects features with rich discriminative information for classification tasks in an observed list. This paper seeks to facilitate the automation of feature transferring in between tasks by utilising the observed list. We hypothesise that the best discriminative features of a classification task carry its characteristics. Therefore, the relatedness between any two tasks can be estimated by comparing their most appropriate patterns. We propose a multiple-XOF system, called mXOF, that can dynamically adapt feature transfer among XOFs. This system utilises the observed list to estimate the task relatedness. This method enables the automation of transferring features. In terms of knowledge discovery, the resemblance estimation provides insightful relations among multiple data. We experimented mXOF on various scenarios, e.g. representative Hierarchical Boolean problems, classification of distinct classes in the UCI Zoo dataset, and unrelated tasks, to validate its abilities of automatic knowledge-transfer and estimating task relatedness. Results show that mXOF can estimate the relatedness reasonably between multiple tasks to aid the learning performance with the dynamic feature transferring.Comment: accepted by The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2020

Exploring the Application of Hybrid Evolutionary Computation Techniques to Physical Activity Recognition

This paper has been presented at: GECCO '16 Companion Proceedings of the 2016 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion.This paper focuses on the problem of physical activity recognition, i.e., the development of a system which is able to learn patterns from data in order to be able to detect which physical activity (e.g. running, walking, ascending stairs, etc.) a certain user is performing.While this field is broadly explored in the literature, there are few works that face the problem with evolutionary computation techniques. In this case, we propose a hybrid system which combines particle swarm optimization for clustering features and genetic programming combined with evolutionary strategies for evolving a population of classifiers, shaped in the form of decision trees. This system would run the segmentation, feature extraction and classification stages of the activity recognition chain.For this paper, we have used the PAMAP2 dataset with a basic preprocessing. This dataset is publicly available at UCI ML repository. Then, we have evaluated the proposed system using three different modes: a user-independent, a user-specific and a combined one. The results in terms of classification accuracy were poor for the first and the last mode, but it performed significantly well for the user-specific case. This paper aims to describe work in progress, to share early results an discuss them. There are many things that could be improved in this proposed system, but overall results were interesting especially because no manual data transformation took place.This project was partially funded by European Union's CIP Programme (ICT-PSP-2012) under grant agreement no. 325146 (SEACW project), and is supported the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport through FPU fellowship with identifier FPU13/03917

Design and implementation of evolutionary computation algorithms for volunteer compute networks

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, June 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "May 23, 2014."Includes bibliographical references (page 37).We implemented a distributed evolutionary computation system titled EvoGPJ Star (EGS) and deployed the system onto Boinc, a volunteer computing network (VCN). Evolutionary computation is computationally expensive and VCN allows more cost-effective cluster computing since resources are donated. In addition, we believe that the design similarities between EGS and our chosen VCN (Boinc) would allow for easy integration of the two systems. EGS follows a centralized design pattern, with multiple engines communicating with a central coordinator and case server. The coordinator synchronizes up engines to run experiments and also stores and distributes individual solutions among engines. The engine-coordinator model creates a scalable (engines can be easily added) and robust (can continue to operate if nodes fail) system. For our experiment we chose rule-based classification. We saw the distributed EGS solutions (standard and Boinc) outperform the single-engine system. Deploying the system to Boinc revealed some design conflicts between Boinc and EGS experimentation. These conflicts stemmed from the asynchronous and asymmetric nature of VCNs.by Otitochi Mbagwu.M. Eng

Natural Selection, Adaptive Evolution and Diversity in Computational Ecosystems

The central goal of this thesis is to provide additional criteria towards implementing open-ended evolution in an artificial system. Methods inspired by biological evolution are frequently applied to generate autonomous agents too complex to design by hand. Despite substantial progress in the area of evolutionary computation, additional efforts are needed to identify a coherent set of requirements for a system capable of exhibiting open-ended evolutionary dynamics. The thesis provides an extensive discussion of existing models and of the major considerations for designing a computational model of evolution by natural selection. Thus, the work in this thesis constitutes a further step towards determining the requirements for such a system and introduces a concrete implementation of an artificial evolution system to evaluate the developed suggestions. The proposed system improves upon existing models with respect to easy interpretability of agent behaviour, high structural freedom, and a low-level sensor and effector model to allow numerous long-term evolutionary gradients. In a series of experiments, the evolutionary dynamics of the system are examined against the set objectives and, where appropriate, compared with existing systems. Typical agent behaviours are introduced to convey a general overview of the system dynamics. These behaviours are related to properties of the respective agent populations and their evolved morphologies. It is shown that an intuitive classification of observed behaviours coincides with a more formal classification based on morphology. The evolutionary dynamics of the system are evaluated and shown to be unbounded according to the classification provided by Bedau and Packard’s measures of evolutionary activity. Further, it is analysed how observed behavioural complexity relates to the complexity of the agent-side mechanisms subserving these behaviours. It is shown that for the concrete definition of complexity applied, the average complexity continually increases for extended periods of evolutionary time. In combination, these two findings show how the observed behaviours are the result of an ongoing and lasting adaptive evolutionary process as opposed to being artifacts of the seeding process. Finally, the effect of variation in the system on the diversity of evolved behaviour is investigated. It is shown that coupling individual survival and reproductive success can restrict the available evolutionary trajectories in more than the trivial sense of removing another dimension, and conversely, decoupling individual survival from reproductive success can increase the number of evolutionary trajectories. The effect of different reproductive mechanisms is contrasted with that of variation in environmental conditions. The diversity of evolved strategies turns out to be sensitive to the reproductive mechanism while being remarkably robust to the variation of environmental conditions. These findings emphasize the importance of being explicit about the abstractions and assumptions underlying an artificial evolution system, particularly if the system is intended to model aspects of biological evolution

Knowledge acquisition including tags in a classifier system

Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Washington, DC, 6-9 July 1999.One of the major problems related to classifier systems is the loss of rules. This loss is caused by the genetic algorithm being applied on the entire population of rules jointly. Obviously, the genetic operators discriminate rules by the strength value, such that evolution favours the generation of the stronger rules. When the learning system works in an environment in which it is possible to generate a complete training set, the strength of the rules of the CS will reflect the relative relationship between rules satisfactorily and, therefore, the application of the genetic algorithm will produce the desired effects. However, when the learning process presents individual cases and allows the system to learn gradually from these cases, each learning interval with a set of individual cases can lead the strength to be distributed in favour of a given type of rules that would in turn be favoured by the genetic algorithm. Basically, the idea is to divide rules into groups such that they are forced to remain in the system. This contribution is a method of learning that allows similar knowledge to be grouped. A field in which knowledge-based systems researchers have done a lot of work is concept classification and the relationships that are established between these concepts in the stage of knowledge conceptualization for later formalization. This job of classifying and searching relationships is performed in the proposed classifier systems by means of a mechanism. Tags, that allows the classification and the relationships to be discovered without the need for expert knowledge

A new sequential covering strategy for inducing classification rules with ant colony algorithms

Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms have been successfully applied to discover a list of classification rules. In general, these algorithms follow a sequential covering strategy, where a single rule is discovered at each iteration of the algorithm in order to build a list of rules. The sequential covering strategy has the drawback of not coping with the problem of rule interaction, i.e., the outcome of a rule affects the rules that can be discovered subsequently since the search space is modified due to the removal of examples covered by previous rules. This paper proposes a new sequential covering strategy for ACO classification algorithms to mitigate the problem of rule interaction, where the order of the rules is implicitly encoded as pheromone values and the search is guided by the quality of a candidate list of rules. Our experiments using 18 publicly available data sets show that the predictive accuracy obtained by a new ACO classification algorithm implementing the proposed sequential covering strategy is statistically significantly higher than the predictive accuracy of state-of-the-art rule induction classification algorithms

Artificial Immune Systems - Models, algorithms and applications

Copyright © 2010 Academic Research Publishing Agency.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are computational paradigms that belong to the computational intelligence family and are inspired by the biological immune system. During the past decade, they have attracted a lot of interest from researchers aiming to develop immune-based models and techniques to solve complex computational or engineering problems. This work presents a survey of existing AIS models and algorithms with a focus on the last five years.This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fun