Outlines

This module introduces the basic ideas of nature-inspired design techniques. Different algorithms and their applications will be presented. Similarities and differences between these techniques/algorithms and other classical techniques will be discussed whenever appropriate. The design domain ranges from architectural, engineering and graphics design to electronic circuit design and evolvable hardware. Examples of such techniques include evolution and knowledge discovery, circuit design by evolution, novel architectural design by evolution, creative design, interactive evolution, evolutionary graphics, knowledge extraction from evolution, extrinsic evolvable hardware, intrinsic evolvable hardware, on-line adaptation, and implementation issues.

A very exciting website on Nature-Inspired Creative Design.

Aims

• To introduce some of the fundamental techniques and principles in nature inspired design.
• To investigate their strength, weakness, and potential applications.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a good understanding of different nature-inspired design techniques and how they are applied to solve a real world problem. (Assessed by Examination)
• Demonstrate a good understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of nature-inspired and other traditional design techniques and how they are combined and used to produce an effective solution to a real world problem. (Assessed by Examination)
• Pursue further research in industry or in education (e.g. as a PhD student).

Prerequisites

None.

Corequisites

06-12411 Introduction to Molecular and Quantum Computation, 06-12412 Introduction to Neural Computation, 06-12414 Introduction to Evolutionary Computation.

Teaching Methods

Two hour lectures or tutorials per week.

Assessment

Two hour open book examination (100%).

Recommended Books

Title	Author(s)	Publisher	Comments
Evolutionary Design by Computers	P J Bentley (ed.)	Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.	Good collection of articles on evolutionary design.
Creative Evolutionary Systems	Peter J Bentley and David W Corne (ed)	Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.	Good collection of articles on evolutionary design.
Evolutionary Algorithms in Molecular Design	David E. Clark (Editor)	Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2000.	Good collection of articles on molecular design.
Evolutionary Computation: Theory and Applications	X. Yao (ed)	World Scientific Publ. Co., Singapore, 1999. (ISBN 3-540-65907-2)	Good reference for selected advanced topics.
Proc. of the First International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES'96), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1259	T. Higuchi, M. Iwata and W. Liu (eds.)	Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997	Good collection of articles on evolvable hardware
Proc. of the Second International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES'98), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1478	Moshe Sipper, Daniel Mange, and Andrés Pérez-Uribe (Eds.)	Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998	Good collection of articles on evolvable hardware
Proc. of the Third International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES'00), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1801	Julian Miller, Adrian Thompson, Peter Thomson and Terence C Fogarty (eds.)	Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000	Good collection of articles on evolvable hardware
Proc. of the Fourth International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES'01), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2210	Y. Liu, K. Tanaka, M. Iwata, T. Higuchi and M. Yasunaga (eds.)	Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001	Good collection of articles on evolvable hardware
Various articles in journals and conference proceedings			A list of papers will be specified as the module progresses.

1. Introduction
2. Engineering design
3. Electronic circuit design
4. Evolvable hardware
5. Architectural design
6. Evolutionary graphics and art
7. Interactive evolution
8. Implementation issues
9. Summary

• Lecture notes will be made available online after each lecture.
• A very exciting website on Nature-Inspired Creative Design.

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Maintained by Xin Yao
School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham

Last update 9 January 2002