The Evolution of Concurrent Control Software Using Genetic Programming

Abstract

Despite considerable progress in GP over the past 10 years, there are many outstanding challenges that need to be addressed before it will be widely deployed for developing useful software. In this paper we suggest a method for the automatic creation of concurrent control software using Linear Genetic Programming (LGP) and a 'divide and conquer' approach. The method involves decomposing the whole problem into a multi-task solution with multiple inputs and multiple outputs - similar to the process used to implement embedded control solutions. We describe the necessary architecture of typical embedded control systems and their relevance to this work, the software evolution scheme used and lastly demonstrate the technique for an embedded software problem, namely a washing machine controller. © Springer-Verlag 2004.