HIER-HEIR: An evolutionary system with hierarchical representation and operators applied to fashion design

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in using evolutionary algorithms based techniques to design creative systems. However,these techniques suffer from either being too creative and violating design constraints of the domain or those catering to a limited search space, but operating within design constraints. We have designed a new evolutionary system 'HIER-HEIR', which is not only creative (searches a large space effectively), but creates only such designs which are valid with respect to the design domain. Inspired by human design methodology, the representation is a hierarchy of components and variation acts at all levels of hierarchy intelligently, facilitating effective search in the design space with explicit control over exploitation and exploration. We have explained our technique with the metaphor of automatic design of a fashion dress in this paper. The experimental results validate our hypotheses with regard to the system. With regard to previous work, our technique is new both with regard to previously published hierarchical systems and those designed for evolving fashion designs. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.