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European Conference on Genetic Programming

EuroGP 2000: Genetic Programming pp 16–28Cite as

The Legion System: A Novel Approach to Evolving Heterogeneity for Collective Problem Solving

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1802))

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of agent groups evolved to perform a collective task, and in which the behavioural heterogeneity of the group is under evolutionary control. Two task domains are studied: solutions are evolved for the two tasks using an evolutionary algorithm called the Legion system. A new metric of heterogeneity is also introduced, which measures the heterogeneity of any evolved group behaviour. It was found that the amount of heterogeneity evolved in an agent group is dependent of the given problem domain: for the first task, the Legion system evolved heterogeneous groups; for the second task, primarily homogeneous groups evolved. We conclude that the proposed system, in conjunction with the introduced heterogeneity measure, can be used as a tool for investigating various issues concerning redundancy, robustness and division of labour in the context of evolutionary approaches to collective problem solving.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. AI Lab, Computer Science Department, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland

    Josh C. Bongard

Authors
  1. Josh C. Bongard
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing and Electronic Systems, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, CO4 3SQ, Colchester, UK

    Riccardo Poli

  2. Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

    Wolfgang Banzhaf

  3. Departments of Mathematical, Biological Sciences and Computing and Electronic Systems, University of Essex, UK

    William B. Langdon

  4. School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK

    Julian Miller

  5. Dept. of Physical Rescource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96, Göteborg, Sweden

    Peter Nordin

  6. School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics, South Bank University, SE1 0AA, London, UK

    Terence C. Fogarty

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bongard, J.C. (2000). The Legion System: A Novel Approach to Evolving Heterogeneity for Collective Problem Solving. In: Poli, R., Banzhaf, W., Langdon, W.B., Miller, J., Nordin, P., Fogarty, T.C. (eds) Genetic Programming. EuroGP 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1802. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-46239-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-46239-2_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67339-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46239-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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