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From: roberts@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Robert Saunders)
Subject: Re: Seeding an initial pop in GP
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Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 21:33:36 GMT
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Adam Fraser (a.fraser@eee.salford.ac.uk) wrote:

[snip... my previous stuff deleted]

: 'You don't want to be doing it like that, you want to be doing it like this.'
: 				- Harry Enfield

: Sorry about the above, couldn't resist.  

: Anyway to the point. Look up Karl Simm's work at Alife IV and SIGGRAPH 94.  He used to
: have an ftp site but I think it is closed now.  He used instead of genetic programs something
: called genetic trees.   He evolves not only 3d shapes but shapes with behaviours which move
: through their environment.  His video of them are v. entertaining.


[snip... interesting WWW addresses deleted]

Adam

As far as I can tell the ftp site is still open at Thinking Machines (if that
is the one you were thinking of (no pun intended)). It was in fact the
articles by Karl Sims that gave me the idea of seeding a population. He says
that sometimes the results of previous runs were used to seed the start of
the next generation, using the best solutions found so far. It seems to me
that he could not have generated 500 "winners" and incorporated all of these
into the new 'super-population' but that he must have used a few and then
based the remaining members of the initial population on these. What I am
wondering was how you would do this without biasing the population too much.
Creating the remainder of the population randomly as one would normally do
would not work as these would be so unfit compared to the previous runs
"winners" and so would die of quickly before making any useful contribution.
I hope this makes sense to someone.

Thanks

Rob

PS: Like the Harry Enfield quote, I get the feeling I might hear that one
    a lot. "Genetastic mate!!! Let's Rock."
