GECCO Papers Same research group, different lead authors Same conference Paper 1: Embodied Distributed Evolutionary Algorithm (EDEA) for on-line, on-board adaptation of robot controllers Paper 2: “We propose and experimentally validate racing as a technique to cut short the evaluation of poor individuals”

GECCO Papers Both use On-Board, On-Line (encapsulated) evolution Robots learn in real time in the real world. Testing an individual requires giving it control of the robot. Paper 1 distributes learning across multiple robots Paper 2 uses racing: shortens testing time of poor robots.

µ+1 algorithm Population of µ individuals Generate one new individual (+1) Evaluate new individual and compared to worse individual in the population If the new individual is better, have it replace the worst individual.

GECCO Papers EDEA Paper has more detailed introduction Both use similar test problems (same problem descriptions) Similar parameters and parameter tables Both papers actually use simulations Results are presented very differently

Racing Alpha and Beta (used to determine confidence that challenger is not better) 3 values of each: 9 permutations Risk that one permutation will appear better through luck Even if one permutation is better for a given problem, which one should you use for your problem???

Racing - Conclusion “Of course, our findings very likely depend on the tasks we investigated as well as our choice of controller – as far as we know, the field of evolutionary robotics lacks a taxonomy of robot tasks or controllers that allow for a meaningful generalisation of our findings. Still, the results are promising and warrant further research into racing as a method of improving performance in online evolutionary robotics”

From Homework Smith and Doe found … In Roe et al. it was found … Research by Fred and George showed …

General Writing - Outline “This paper is divided into two parts – Part I and Part II – they describe the basic algorithms of each paradigm, and depict similarities and differences between them. The algorithms are presented in a descriptive instead of a mathematical form.” What is the rest of the paper going to look/sound like? Are there any new results?

General Writing - Outline Outline paragraph at the end of the introduction: “This paper is structured as follows. Section II explains … Section III presents … Section IV …” Alternative, actually explain something: “We begin by presenting related research (Section II). Next we explain how our experiments are designed to test our hypothesis that… (Section III). …”