Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life (202-1-5171)

אלגוריתמים אבלוציוניים וחיים מלאכותיים

Semester A, 2004-2005

Lecturer: Prof. Moshe Sipper

Teaching Assistant: Ami Hauptman

המטריקס - בינתיים זה רק סרט

לך אל הנמלה, חוקר

Course Syllabus

bio-inspired computing, evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, artificial life, cellular automata, cellular computing, self-replication, artificial neural networks.

Bibliography

• M. Sipper, Machine Nature: The Coming Age of Bio-Inspired Computing, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002.
• A. Tettamanzi & M. Tomassini, Soft Computing: Integrating Evolutionary, Neural, and Fuzzy Systems, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2001.
• Z. Michalewicz. Genetic Algorithms + Data Structures = Evolution Programs. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 3rd edition, 1996.
• M. Mitchell, An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.
• J. Koza, Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
• M. Sipper. Evolution of Parallel Cellular Machines: The Cellular Programming Approach. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 1997.
• Papers from the research literature.

Administrative Details

• Web: http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~sipper/courses/ecal051/
• Prerequisite: Design of Algorithms, Principles of Programming Languages
• Credits: 4.
• Time & Place:
  • Sunday 14:00-16:00
  • Wednesday 10:00-12:00
• Grade:
  • 70%: Final exam. (Sample questions.)
  • 30%: Exercises

Exercises
Submission as web page -- send the URL by email to Ami Hauptman
Ex	Due	Grades	Hall of Fame
1	Wednesday, Nov. 3		Shai Sharabi & Ran Naot
2	Sunday, Nov. 21		Roee Zahor & Itai Barami, Noam Taich
3	Wednesday, Dec. 8		Itsik Katsav & Zohar Lerman
4	Sunday, Dec. 26		Shai Sharabi & Ran Naot, Nir Feldman & Na'ama Ben-Aroya
5	Wednesday, Jan. 12		Shai Sharabi & Ran Naot
FINAL EXERCISE GRADES

(Evolving) Schedule
Date	Topic	Subtopic(s)
Sunday, Oct. 17	Introduction	to Bio-Inspired Computing and Artificial Life
Wednesday, Oct. 20	Genetic Algorithms	Introduction
Sunday, Oct. 24	Genetic Algorithms	Holland's Schema Theorem, Exact Schema Theorem (Slides from Riccardo Poli)
Wednesday, Oct. 27	Genetic Algorithms	8 Queens, Genetic Operators, Evolution Strategies
Sunday, Oct. 31	Genetic Algorithms	Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)
Wednesday, Nov. 3	Genetic Algorithms	Evolution of Fuzzy Systems
Sunday, Nov. 7	Genetic Algorithms	Coevolution of Fuzzy Systems, Coevolving Sorting Networks
Wednesday, Nov. 10	Genetic Algorithms	Coevolving Solutions to the SCS Problem
Sunday, Nov. 14	Genetic Programming	Introduction (also here and here)
Wednesday, Nov. 17	Genetic Programming	Examples (here and here), ADFs   (Short notes on GP, ADFs and branch typing)
Sunday, Nov. 21	Genetic Programming	Varieties of GP, Architecture-Altering Operations
Wednesday, Nov. 24	Genetic Programming	GP-Robocode, Excerpts from Koza's DVD
Sunday, Nov. 28	Artificial Neural Networks	Introduction + Supervised Learning -- Perceptrons
Wednesday, Dec. 1	Artificial Neural Networks	Supervised Learning -- Backpropagation
Sunday, Dec. 5	Artificial Neural Networks	Unsupervised Learning -- Self-Organizing Feature Maps (also here and here)
Wednesday, Dec. 8	Artificial Neural Networks	Evolving Artificial Neural Networks
	Cellular Computing	Cellular Automata (CA), Quasi-Uniform CA
Sunday, Dec. 12	Hanukkah Vacation
Wednesday, Dec. 15	Cellular Computing	Introduction (also here)
Sunday, Dec. 19	Evolution	(Dr. Ariel Novoplansky)
Wednesday, Dec. 22	Cellular Computing	Cellular Programming (also here)
Sunday, Dec. 26	Molecular Biology	(Dr. Chen Keasar)
Wednesday, Dec. 29	Cellular Computing	Cellular Programming -- Coevolving Architectures for Cellular Machines
Sunday, Jan. 2	Artificial Self-Replication	(also this paper)
Wednesday, Jan. 5	Artificial Life	Introduction
Sunday, Jan. 9	GP & Games: Chess	(Ami Hauptman)
Wednesday, Jan. 12	GA & Games: GO ANNs	(Ami Hauptman)

Last updated: February 1, 2005