Genetic Programming as a Darwinian Invention Machine

  • Authors:

  • John R. Koza;Forrest H. Bennett, III;Oscar Stiffelman

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Genetic Programming
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

Genetic programming is known to be capable of creating designs that satisfy prespecified high-level design requirements for analog electrical circuits and other complex structures. However, in the real world, it is often important that a design satisfy various non-technical requirements. One such requirement is that a design not possess the key characteristics of any previously known design. This paper shows that genetic programming can be used to generate novel solutions to a design problem so that genetic programming may be potentially used as an invention machine. This paper turns the clock back to the period just before the time (1917) when George Campbell of American Telephone and Telegraph invented and patented the design for an electrical circuit that is now known as the ladder filter. Genetic programming is used to reinvent the Campbell filter. The paper then turns the clock back to the period just before the time (1928) when Wilhelm Cauer invented and patented the elliptic filter. Genetic programming is then used to reinvent a technically equivalent filter that avoids the key characteristics of then-preexisting Campbell filter. Genetic programming can be used as an invention machine by employing a two-part fitness measure that incorporates both the degree to which an individual in the population satisfies the given technical requirements and the degree to which the individual does not possess the key characteristics of preexisting technology.