15. Coevolutionary Systems

In most of this book we have been concerned with problems where the quality of a proposed solution can be relatively easily measured in isolation by some externally provided fitness function. Evaluating a solution may involve an element of random noise, but does not particularly depend on the context in which it is done. However, there are two obvious scenarios in which this set-up does not really hold:

  • The first occurs when a solution represents some strategy or design that works in opposition to some competitor that is itself adapting. The most obvious example here would be adversarial game-playing such as chess.
  • The second comes about when a solution being evolved does not represent a complete solution to a problem, but instead can only be evaluated as part of a greater whole, that together accomplishes some task. An example might be the evolution of a set of traffic-light controllers, each to be sited on a different junction, with fitness reflecting their joint performance in reducing congestion over a day’s simulated traffic.

Both of these are examples of coevolution. This chapter gives an overview of the types of scenarios where coevolution might be usefully applied, and of some of the issues involved in designing a successful application.

Contents:
15.1 Coevolution in Nature ……………………………..223
15.2 Cooperative Coevolution ……………………………224
15.2.1 Partnering Strategies …………………………225
15.3 Competitive Coevolution ……………………………226
15.4 Summary of Algorithmic Adaptations for Context-Dependent Evaluation……………………………………….227
15.5 Example Application: Coevolving Checkers Players . . . . . . . . . . 228

Suggested Reading

Exercises

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

The on-line accompaniment to the book Introduction to Evolutionary Computing