Evolution design of buildable objects with blind builder: an empirical study

Abstract

In a previous paper, we presented BlindBuilder, a newrepresentation formalism for Evolutionary Design basedon construction plans. As for other indirect encodingapproaches in the literature, BlindBuilder makes itpossible to easily represent possible solutions butmakes it difficult to perform structural optimisation.While satisfying results are provided, it becomes moreand more difficult to build larger structures duringthe course of evolution. This is due to the highdisruptive rate of variation operators as constructionplans grow. In this paper, we provide an analysis ofsuch a problem and propose new construction operatorsto avoid this. Then, we perform extensive experimentsso as to identify the key parameters and discuss theadvantages, limitations and possible perspectives ofthe indirect encoding approach.