1. CAP6938 Neuroevolution and Developmental Encoding Developmental Encoding 2 Dr. Kenneth Stanley October 9, 2006

2. Where is DE Useful? Problems with regularities –Board games –Visual processing/image recognition –Pictures –Music –Puzzles –Architectures/morphologies –Brains –Bodies Problems requiring high complexity –High-level cognition –Strategic thinking –Tactical thinking

3. Where is DE not Useful? Problems without regularity –Pole balancing Simple high-precision domains –Very small picture reproduction Simple control tasks –Go to the food

4. DE Testing Paradox DE is a mismatch for simple problems Hard problems are too hard to just get started Where do we begin?

5. Progress through Benchmarks Visualization is most revealing –Observe growth and final product –Shapes and pictures are easy to analyze What’s the first useful thing DE will do? Julian Miller’s French Flags http://www.elec.york.ac.uk/intsys/users/jfm7/french-flag/sld018.htm

6. Where does NEAT Fit In with DE? If it’s a neural network, it’s obvious If it’s just “genes,” it still works like NEAT –Need a way to get to a lot of genes –NEAT will complexify into the right number –Historical markings tell which gene is which –Speciation keeps innovation protected, incompatible individuals apart

7. Next Class: Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs) Abstracting away development A new kind of indirect encoding based on function composition Theory and preliminary results Exploiting Regularity Without DevelopmentExploiting Regularity Without Development by Kenneth O. Stanley. To appear in: Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Developmental Systems. Meno Park, CA: AAAI Press, 2006 (8 pages)