Natural Computation and Its Applications

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Natural Computation and Its Applications

• Xin Yao
• Natural Computation Group
• Email x.yao_at_cs.bham.ac.uk
• http//www.cs.bham.ac.uk/xin

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What This Lecture is NOT About
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Not Commercial
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Not Programming
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Not Even Lecturing!
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Frustration with Computers

• Brittle
• Non-adaptive
• Doesnt learn
• Hopeless in dealing with noisy and inaccurate
  information
• Doesnt do the homework for me although I told it
  that I want a mark over 70

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Mother Nature

• Who designed us and all our wonderful
  capabilities?

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Natural Computation

• Nature-Inspired Computation

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Natural Computation

• Evolutionary computation
• Neural computation
• Molecular computation
• Quantum computation
• Ecological computation
• Biological computation

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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

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Comparison of Four Methods

• http//www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.ph
  p?node71

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Moving Target

• http//www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.ph
  p?node73

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Evolving a Nozzle

• http//www.evonet.polytechnique.fr/CIRCUS2/node.ph
  p?node72

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Ant Colony Optimisation
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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.

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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?

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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/

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Neural Computation

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

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Artificial Life

• Life as it could be vs. life as it is
• Great at exploring the huge space of artefacts
• Boids
• Karl Simss artificial creatures

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Evolutionary Art

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

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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

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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

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Programme Structure
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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

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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.

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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