Artificial evolution with Binary Decision Diagrams: a study in evolvability in neutral spaces

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http://eprints.org/relation/isVersionOf http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/document/26878 http://eprints.org/relation/isVolatileVersionOf http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/document/26878 http://eprints.org/relation/isIndexCodesVersionOf http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/document/26878 archive 4031 disk0/00/00/08/62 2013-02-20 15:41:26 2019-01-23 09:53:01 2013-02-20 15:41:26 thesis show 0 Downing Richard Mark Kaban Ata Hancox Peter University of Birmingham Artificial evolution with Binary Decision Diagrams: a study in evolvability in neutral spaces unpub QA75 30sch_comp Evolving Binary Decision Diagrams using Inherent Neutrality; EBDDIN This thesis develops a new approach to evolving Binary Decision Diagrams, and uses it to study evolvability issues. For reasons that are not yet fully understood, current approaches to artificial evolution fail to exhibit the evolvability so readily exhibited in nature. To be able to apply evolvability to artificial evolution the field must first understand and characterise it; this will then lead to systems which are much more capable than they are currently. An experimental approach is taken. Carefully crafted, controlled experiments elucidate the mechanisms and properties that facilitate evolvability, focusing on the roles and interplay between neutrality, modularity, gradualism, robustness and diversity. Evolvability is found to emerge under gradual evolution as a biased distribution of functionality within the genotype-phenotype map, which serves to direct phenotypic variation. Neutrality facilitates fitness-conserving exploration, completely alleviating local optima. Population diversity, in conjunction with neutrality, is shown to facilitate the evolution of evolvability. The search is robust, scalable, and insensitive to the absence of initial diversity. The thesis concludes that gradual evolution in a search space that is free of local optima by way of neutrality can be a viable alternative to problematic evolution on multi-modal landscapes. 2008-07 2008-06 graduation eng author unchecked This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. public 200 University of Birmingham School of Computer Science d_ph na 2008-07 graduation