Natural Computation and Its Applications

Xin Yao

Natural Computation Group

Email: x.yao@cs.bham.ac.uk

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~xin

What This Lecture is NOT About

Not Commercial

Not Programming

Not Even Lecturing!

Frustration with Computers

Brittle Non-adaptive Doesn’t learn Hopeless in dealing with noisy and inaccurate

information Doesn’t do the homework for me although I

told it that I want a mark over 70% …

Mother Nature

Who designed us and all our wonderful capabilities?

Natural Computation

Nature-Inspired Computation

Natural Computation

Evolutionary computation Neural computation Molecular computation Quantum computation Ecological computation Biological computation …

Evolutionary Algorithm: An Example

Initialise the population Repeat until the halting criteria are met

– Fitness evaluation– Parent selection (natural selection)– Breeding/reproduction by crossover and mutation to

generate the new generation

Comparison of Four Methods

http://www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.php?node=71

Moving Target

http://www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.php?node=73

Evolving a Nozzle

http://www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.php?node=72

Ant Colony Optimisation

Channel Allocation Inspired by Fruit Flies

Fruitflies have an insensitive exoskeleton peppered with sensors formed from short bristles attached to nerve cells. It is important that the bristles are more or less evenly spread out across the surface of the fly. In particular it is undesirable to have two bristles right next to each other. The correct pattern is formed during the fly's development by interactions among its cells. The individual cells "argue" with each other by secreting protein signals, and perceiving the signals of their neighbours.  The cells are autonomous, each running its own "algorithm" using information from its local environment.  Each cell sends a signal to its neighbours; at the same time it listens for such a signal from its neighbours.  The signal is saying, in effect, "I want to make a bristle".  The more "loudly" it "hears" its neighbours signalling, the less of the signal it produces.  In other words the signal is inhibitory.  This "arguing" process is the inspiration for the channel allocation method presented here.

Container Packing

How to pack a standard size container with various sized boxes to minimise wasted space?

How cut a standard length stock according to different requirements while minimising wastage?

…

Applications of Evolutionary Computation

Genetic Algorithms in Parametric Design of Aircraft Air-Injected Hydrocyclone Optimization Via Genetic

Algorithm A Genetic Algorithm Approach to Multiple Fault Diagnosis A Genetic Algorithm for Conformational Analysis of DNA Automated Parameter Tuning for Sonar Information

Processing http://www.nutechsolutions.com/case_studies/

Neural Computation

Parallel and distributed Learnable Fault-tolerant Noise-tolerant Efficient computation from slow components! Good at perception tasks …

Artificial Life

Life as it could be vs. life as it is Great at exploring the huge space of artefacts Boids Karl Sims’s artificial creatures …

Evolutionary Art

Evolutionary art from Andrew Rowbottom Genetic art by Peter Kleiweg Organic art by William Latham By our own student! …

Where to Find More information

MSc in Natural Computation The Natural Computation Group CERCIA (The Centre of Excellence for

Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications)

AI/NC Seminars

MSc in Natural Computation

EPSRC studentships available, covering tuition fees and maintenance costs, great as a stepping stone for a PhD

Lots of industrial partners, good for a company career

Small class size with lots of interactions with lecturers

Programme Structure

TERM 1

1. Neural Computation

2. Evolutionary Computation

3. Quantum and Molecular Computation

4. Mini-project 1

TERM2

1. Nature-inspired Optimisation

2. Nature-inspired Learning

3. Nature-inspired Design

4. Mini-project 2

TERM3

Main project (some in collaboration with an industrial partner)

Natural Computation Group

One of the strongest in the world 7 core academic members and more than 20

PhD students 4 other teaching staff with strong overlaps

CERCIA

Four research fellows (additional to NC group staff) and three admin staff

Specialise in applied research and industrial projects

Current work includes energy consumption prediction, evolutionary art, business match, etc.

Summary

Ever-increasing complexity of the problems to be solved by computers and the ever-increasing complexity of the computer systems require a radical rethinking of future directions of computing

Natural computation (nature inspired computation) is a promising future direction