Directing Evolution The Automated Design of Evolutionary Pathways Using Directed Graphs

As computing power grows, the automated specialization and design of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to tune their performance to individual problem classes becomes more attractive. To this end, a significant amount of research has been conducted in recent decades, utilizing a wide range of techniques. However, few techniques have been devised which automate the design of the overall structure of an EA. Most EA implementations rely solely on the traditional evolutionary cycle of parent selection, reproduction, and survival selection, and those with unique structures typically replace this with another static, hand-made cycle. Existing techniques for modifying the evolutionary structure use representations which are either loosely structured and highly stochastic, or which are constrained and unable to easily evolve complicated pathways. The ability to easily evolve complex evolutionary pathways would greatly expand the heuristic space which can be explored during specialization, potentially allowing for the representation of EAs which outperform the traditional cycle. This work proposes a methodology for the automated design of the evolutionary process by introducing a novel directed-graph-based representation, created to be mutable and flexible, permitting a black-box designer to produce reusable, high-performance EAs. Experiments show that our methodology can produce high-performance EAs demonstrating intelligible strategies.