Xianneng Li

Genetic Network Programming with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms for class association rule mining in traffic prediction

As an extension of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP), a new approach named Genetic Network Programming (GNP) has been proposed in the evolutionary computation field. GNP uses multiple reusable nodes to construct directed-graph structures to represent its solutions. Recently, many research has clarified that GNP can work well in data mining area. In this paper, a novel evolutionary paradigm named GNP with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (GNP-EDAs) is proposed and used to solve traffic prediction problems using class association rule mining. In GNP-EDAs, a probabilistic model is constructed by estimating the probability distribution from the selected elite individuals of the previous generation to replace the conventional genetic operators, such as crossover and mutation. The probabilistic model is capable of enhancing the evolution to achieve the ultimate objective. In this paper, two methods are proposed based on extracting the probabilistic information on the node connections and node transitions of GNP-EDAs to construct the probabilistic model. A comparative study of the proposed paradigm and the conventional GNP is made to solve the traffic prediction problems using class association rule mining. The simulation results showed that GNP-EDAs can extract the class association rules more effectively, when the number of the candidate class association rules increases. And the classification accuracy of the proposed method shows good results in traffic prediction systems.

Use of infeasible individuals in probabilistic model building genetic network programming

Classical EDAs generally use truncation selection to estimate the distribution of the feasible (good) individuals while ignoring the infeasible (bad) ones. However, various research in EAs reported that the infeasible individuals may affect and help the problem solving. This paper proposed a new method to use the infeasible individuals by studying the sub-structures rather than the entire individual structures to solve Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems, which generally factorize their entire solutions to the sequences of state-action pairs. This work was studied in a recent graph-based EDA named Probabilistic Model Building Genetic Network Programming (PMBGNP) which can solve RL problems successfully. The effectiveness of this work is verified in a RL problem, i.e., robot control, comparing with some other related work.

A novel estimation of distribution algorithm using graph-based chromosome representation and reinforcement learning

This paper proposed a novel EDA, where a directed graph network is used to represent its chromosome. In the proposed algorithm, a probabilistic model is constructed from the promising individuals of the current generation using reinforcement learning, and used to produce the new population. The node connection probability is studied to develop the probabilistic model, therefore pairwise interactions can be demonstrated to identify and recombine building blocks in the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm is applied to a problem of agent control, i.e., autonomous robot control. The experimental results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm comparing with the conventional algorithms.

Genetic Network Programming with Simplified Genetic Operators

Recently, a novel type of evolutionary algorithms EAs, called Genetic Network Programming GNP, has been proposed. Inspired by the complex human brain structures, GNP develops a distinguished directed graph structure for its individual representations, consequently showing an excellent expressive ability for modelling a range of complex problems. This paper is dedicated to reveal GNPs unique features. Accordingly, simplified genetic operators are proposed to highlight such features of GNP, reduce its computational effort and provide better results. Experimental results are presented to confirm its effectiveness over original GNP and several state-of-the-art algorithms.

A Learning Classifier System Based on Genetic Network Programming

Recent advances in Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs) have shown their sequential decision-making ability with a generalization property. In this paper, a novel LCS named extended rule-based Genetic Network Programming (XrGNP) is proposed. Different from most of the current LCSs, the rules are represented and discovered through a graph-based evolutionary algorithm GNP, which consequently has the distinct expression ability to model and evolve the decision-making rules. XrGNP is described in details in which its unique features are explicitly mapped. Experiments on benchmark and real-world multi-step problems demonstrate the effectiveness of XrGNP.

Genetic Network Programming with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms for Class Association Rule Mining in Traffic Prediction

As an extension of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP), a new approach named Genetic Network Programming (GNP) has been proposed in the evolutionary computation field. GNP uses multiple reusable nodes to construct directed-graph structures to represent its solutions. Recently, many research has clarified that GNP can work well in data mining area. In this paper, a novel evolutionary paradigm named GNP with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (GNP-EDAs) is proposed and used to solve traffic prediction problems using class association rule mining. In GNP-EDAs, a probabilistic model is constructed by estimating the probability distribution from the selected elite individuals of the previous generation to replace the conventional genetic operators, such as crossover and mutation. The probabilistic model is capable of enhancing the evolution to achieve the ultimate objective. In this paper, two methods are proposed based on extracting the probabilistic information on the node connections and node transitions of GNP-EDAs to construct the probabilistic model. A comparative study of the proposed paradigm and the conventional GNP is made to solve the traffic prediction problems using class association rule mining. The simulation results showed that GNP-EDAs can extract the class association rules more effectively, when the number of the candidate class association rules increases. And the classification accuracy of the proposed method shows good results in traffic prediction systems.

Continuous probabilistic model building genetic network programming using reinforcement learning

Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted HighlightsThis paper proposes a novel continuous estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA).A recent EDA named PMBGNP is extended from discrete domain to continuous domain.Reinforcement Learning (RL) is applied to construct the probabilistic model.Experiments on real mobile robot control show the superiority of the proposed algorithm.It bridges the gap between EDA and RL. Recently, a novel probabilistic model-building evolutionary algorithm (so called estimation of distribution algorithm, or EDA), named probabilistic model building genetic network programming (PMBGNP), has been proposed. PMBGNP uses graph structures for its individual representation, which shows higher expression ability than the classical EDAs. Hence, it extends EDAs to solve a range of problems, such as data mining and agent control. This paper is dedicated to propose a continuous version of PMBGNP for continuous optimization in agent control problems. Different from the other continuous EDAs, the proposed algorithm evolves the continuous variables by reinforcement learning (RL). We compare the performance with several state-of-the-art algorithms on a real mobile robot control problem. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the others with statistically significant differences.

Variable Size Genetic Network Programming with Binomial Distribution

This paper proposes a different type of Genetic Network Programming (GNP) — Variable Size Genetic Network Programming (GNPvs) with Binomial Distribution. In contrast to the individuals with fixed size in Standard GNP, GNPvs will change the size of the individuals and obtain the optimal size of them during evolution. The proposed method defines a new type of crossover to implement the new feature of GNP. The new crossover will select the number of nodes to move from each parent GNP to another parent GNP. The probability of selecting the number of nodes to move satisfies the binomial probability distribution. The proposed method can keep the effectiveness of crossover and improve the performance of GNP. In order to verify the performance of the proposed method, a well-known benchmark problem — Tile-world is used in the simulations. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Evolving directed graphs with artificial bee colony algorithm

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a relatively new optimization technique that simulates the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bee swarms. It has been applied to several optimization domains to show its efficient evolution ability. In this paper, ABC algorithm is applied for the first time to evolve a directed graph chromosome structure, which derived from a recent graph-based evolutionary algorithm called genetic network programming (GNP). Consequently, it is explored to new application domains which can be efficiently modeled by the directed graph of GNP. In this work, a problem of controlling the agentss behavior under a wellknown benchmark testbed called Tileworld are solved using the ABC-based evolution strategy. Its performance is compared with several very well-known methods for evolving computer programs, including standard GNP with crossover/mutation, genetic programming (GP) and reinforcement learning (RL).

Optimal route planning with restrictions for car navigation systems

The optimal route search in car navigation Systems is often considered to be a route search from the origin to destination. Many algorithms have been proposed to search for the optimal route from the origin to destination. However, in real situations several restrictions may need to be considered in the route search like some intersections must be included in the route while some should be excluded. The conventional optimal route search methods cannot consider such restrictions in the route search. In this paper, we propose a method to find the optimal route considering such restrictions, focusing on the restriction that some intermediate destinations must be visited before reaching the final destination. The proposed method is divided into three steps. In the first step, the optimal traveling times among the origin, intermediate destinations and final destination are calculated. In the second step, the optimal order of visiting intermediate destinations is optimized using RasID-D, a random search method for discrete optimization problems. Finally, in the third step, the optimal route from the origin to destination via intermediate destinations is determined. The paper also discusses the heuristic initialization to increase the efficiency of the optimal search. The proposed method was evaluated using a grid network with randomly generated intermediate intersections. Simulation results showed that the proposed method is more efficient than the genetic algorithm for optimizing the visiting order.