Domain Specificity of Genetic Programming Based Automated Synthesis: A Case Study with Synthesis of Mechanical Vibration Absorbers

Abstract

Genetic programming has proved its potential forautomated synthesis of a variety of engineering systemssuch as electrical, control, and mechanical systems.Given any of these application domains, a set ofgeneric GP functions can be developed for itssynthesis. In this chapter, however, we illustrate thatwhile a generic GP system can often be used to prove aconcept, realistic or industrial automated synthesisoften requires domain-specific GP configuration,especially of the GP function sets. As a case study, itis shown how the open-ended topology search capabilityof GP readily exploits _loopholes_ in a genericbond-graph-based GP function set and evolveshigh-performance but unrealistic mechanical vibrationabsorbers, even though the bond graphs would be readilyimplementable in, for example, the electrical domain.The preliminary attempt to constrain evolved topologiesto only those that would be readily implementable inthe mechanical domain was not sufficientlyrestrictive.