2005 HUMAN-COMPETITIVE AWARDS—THE HUMIES
Last updated March 28, 2006
Techniques of genetic and evolutionary computation are being increasingly applied to difficult real-world problems—often yielding results that are not merely interesting and impressive, but competitive with the work of creative and inventive humans.
At the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in
Entries are now being solicited for awards totaling $10,000 for 2005 awards for human-competitive results that have been produced by any form of genetic and evolutionary computation (e.g., genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, learning classifier systems, grammatical evolution, etc.) and that are published in the open literature between July 1, 2004 and the deadline for 2005 entries is Monday June 20, 2005. The publication may be a GECCO paper (i.e., regular paper, poster paper, or late-breaking paper) or a paper published elsewhere in the open literature (e.g., journal, another conference, technical report, thesis, book, book chapter) or a paper in final form that has been unconditionally accepted and is “in press” (that is, the entry must be identical to something that will be published momentarily and not an intermediate draft version).
An automatically created result is “human-competitive” if it satisfies at least one of the eight criteria below.
(A)
The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a
patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention.
(B)
The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new
scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal.
(C)
The result is equal to or better than a result that was placed into a database
or archive of results maintained by an internationally recognized panel of
scientific experts.
(D)
The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result ¾ independent of the fact that the result
was mechanically created.
(E)
The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created solution to
a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of increasingly
better human-created solutions.
(F)
The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an
achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.
(G)
The result solves a problem of indisputable difficulty in its field.
(H)
The result holds its own or wins a regulated competition involving human
contestants (in the form of either live human players or human-written computer
programs).
Presentations of entries will be made at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2005). The awards and prizes will be announced and presented during the GECCO conference. The 2005 judging committee is in formation and will include
· Wolfgang Banzhaf (Editor-in-Chief
of Genetic Programming and Evolvable
Hardware journal)
· David Goldberg (past chair
of International Society of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation)
· Erik
· Riccardo Poli (GECCO-2004
Chair)
· Una-May O’Reilly
(GECCO-2005 Chair)
The prize fund will be divided, as the committee decides, among the entries.
Every new result deemed by the committee to be human-competitive for the past
year will get some cash award. Depending on the committee’s evaluation of the
relative merit of the entries, the prize fund may be divided equally or may be
divided so as to reflect a ranking among the results deemed to be
human-competitive. The committee will divide the prize money equally among
co-authors.
Authors are encouraged to nominate their own work. Anyone may call the
committee’s attention to particular work by
No member of the awards committee may be associated with any entry (e.g., academic advisor, collaborator, co-author). No cash prize may be awarded to anyone employed by the company donating the prize funds (i.e., Third Millennium On-Line Products Inc.); however, a result may be entered by such person (but not for cash prize).
There were 23 entries. The results of the competition are as follows:
|
|
Author(s) |
Paper(s) |
Statement on why result is human competitive |
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Jonathan Wright Yi Zhang |
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Joc Cing Nhu Binh Ho |
Evolving
Dispatching Rules for Solving the Flexible Job-Shop Problem
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Josh Bongard |
Reinventing
the Wheel: An Experiment in Evolutionary Geometry
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Kuntinee Maneeratana Kittipong Boonlong Nachol Chaiyaratana |
Multi-objective
optimisation by co-operative co-evolution
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Daniel Howard Joseph Kolibal |
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Maarten Keijzer Martin Baptist Vladan Babovic Javier Uthurburu |
Determining
Equations for Vegetation Induced Resistance using Genetic Programming
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Shail Patel Ian Stott Manmohan Bhakoo Peter Elliott |
Patenting Evolved
Bacterial Peptides
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Lukas Sekanina Michal Bidlo |
Evolutionary Design
of Arbitrarily Large Sorting Networks Using Development
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
Zheng Yi Wu Thomas M. Walski |
Optimizing
Water System Improvement for a Growing Community
|
|
|
$100 – Honorable Mention |
LTC Terry O'Donnell MAJ Jim Hunter 1LT Richard Barton Terence Bullett Steven Best |
Genetic
Hybrid Antenna Fills the Gap
|
|
|
|
Author(s) |
Title(s) |
Statement on why result is human competitive |
|
|
Joc Cing Nhu Binh Ho |
Evolving
Dispatching Rules for Solving the Flexible Job-Shop Problem
|
|
|
|
Anil Patel David Davis Jim Ouimette Charlie Guthrie Dave Tuk John Williams Tai Nguyen |
Optimizing
Cyclic Steam Oil Production with Genetic Algorithms
|
|
|
|
Zong Woo Geem |
Optimal Cost
Design of Water Distribution Networks using Harmony Search
|
|
|
|
Gregory S. Hornby Seiichi Takamura Takashi Yamamoto Masahiro Fujita |
Autonomous
Evolution of Dynamic Gaits with Two Quadruped Robots
|
|
|
|
Yuji Sato Ryutaro Kanno |
Event-Driven Learning
Classifier Systems for Online Soccer Games
|
|
|
|
Trichy M Kethara Pasupathy Robert G. Wilhelm |
Evolutionary
algorithm for the placement of fluid power valves on a valve stand
|
|
The deadline for 2005 entries is Monday June 20, 2005.
All entries (see below for detailed instructions) are to be sent
electronically to banzhaf@cs.mun.ca
At the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2005)
to be held in Washington, DC on June 25–29 (Saturday-Wednesday), 2005, short
oral presentations (probably 10 minutes) by the finalists will be heard by an
awards committee and conference attendees at a special session (2 hours). If
the number of entries exceed 11, the awards committee (or a subcommittee
thereof) will create a short list of about 11 finalists who will be invited to
This competition is for human-competitive results that have been produced by any form of genetic and evolutionary computation (e.g., genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, learning classifier systems, grammatical evolution, etc.) and that are published in the open literature between July 1, 2004 and the deadline for 2005 entries (June 20, 2005). This prize competition is based on published results. The publication may be a GECCO paper (i.e., regular paper, poster paper, or late-breaking paper) or a paper published elsewhere in the open literature (e.g., journal, another conference, technical report, thesis, book, book chapter) or a paper in final form that has been unconditionally accepted in this final form and is “in press” (that is, the entry must be identical to something that will be published momentarily, has a definite and certain citation, and not an intermediate draft version).
An entry consists of two files (one TEXT file and one PDF file).
The TEXT file must contain the following seven items:
(1) the complete title of one
(or more) paper(s) published in the open literature describing the work that
the author claims describes a human-competitive result,
(2) the name, physical
mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of EACH author of EACH paper,
(3) the name of the
corresponding author (to whom notices will be sent concerning the competition),
(4) the abstract of the
paper(s),
(5) a list containing one or
more of the eight letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or H) that correspond to the
criteria (see above) that the author claims that the work satisfies,
(6) a statement stating why
the result satisfies that criteria (use the examples below as a guide as to
possible forms of this “statement”), and
(7) a full citation of the
paper (that is, author names; publication date; name of journal, conference,
technical report, thesis, book, or book chapter; name of editors, if
applicable, of the journal or edited book; publisher name; publisher city; page
numbers, if applicable).
The PDF file(s) are to contain the paper(s). The first choice is that you send a separate PDF file for each of your paper(s) relating to your work. However, if your publisher requires that your published paper may only appear on your own home page, the second choice is that you send link(s) to the web page containing a PDF file of your paper(s). Be sure that the paper is alone on the web page or easily found on the web page.
Both the text file and the PDF file(s) for each entry will be posted on a web page shortly after the deadline date for entries (for use by the judges and anyone interested) and remain posted on the web as a permanent record of the competition.
Authors are encouraged to enter their own work. A person may
Harry Jones of The Brown Instrument Company of
(A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement
over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new
invention.
(F) The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an
achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.
The rediscovery by genetic programming of the PID-D2 controller came about
six decades after Jones received a patent for his invention. Nonetheless, the
fact that the original human-designed version satisfied the Patent Office’s
criteria for patent-worthiness means that the genetically evolved duplicate
would also have satisfied the Patent Office’s criteria for patent-worthiness
(if only it had arrived earlier than Jones’ patent application).
The 1942 Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules for PID controllers were a significant
development in the field of control engineering. These rules have been in
widespread use since they were invented.
The 1995 Åström-Hägglund tuning rules were another significant development.
They outperform the 1942 Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules on the industrially
representative plants used by Åström and Hägglund. Åström and Hägglund
developed their improved tuning rules by applying mathematical analysis,
shrewdly chosen approximations, and considerable creative flair.
The genetically evolved PID tuning rules are an improvement over the 1995
Åström-Hägglund tuning rules.
Referring to the eight criteria for establishing that an automatically
created result is competitive with a human-produced result, the creation by
genetic programming of improved tuning rules for PID controllers satisfies the
following five of the eight criteria:
(B) The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a
new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal.
(D) The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific
result—independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created.
(E) The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created
solution to a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of
increasingly better human-created solutions.
(F) The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an
achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.
(G) The result solves a problem of indisputable difficulty in its field.
Although the solution produced by genetic programming for this problem is, in fact, better than a human-produced solution, that fact alone does not qualify the result as “human-competitive” under the eight criteria for human-competitiveness. The fact that a problem appears in a college textbook is not alone sufficient to establish the problem’s difficulty or importance. A textbook problem might, or might not, satisfy one or more of the eight criteria.
Click here for tables showing the 11 entries in 2004, the 11 “statements” of “human-competitiveness” for 2004, and the slides for the 11 presentations for 2004 for the $5,000 in 2004 awards for human-competitive results.
· For information about the
annual 2006 Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation (GECCO) conference (which includes the annual
GP conference) to be held on July 8-12, 2006
(Saturday – Wednesday) in
· Click here for tables showing the 23 entries in 2004, the “statements” of “human-competitiveness,” and the slides for the presentations for the $10,000 in awards for 2005 human-competitive results
· Click here for tables showing the 11 entries in 2004, the “statements” of “human-competitiveness,” and the slides for the presentations for the $5,000 in awards for 2004 for human-competitive results.
· The home page of Genetic Programming Inc. at www.genetic-programming.com.
· For information about the field of genetic programming and the field of genetic and evolutionary computation, visit www.genetic-programming.org
· The home page of John R. Koza (including online versions of most published papers)
· For information about John Koza’s course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University
· Information about the 1992
book Genetic
Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection,
the 1994 book Genetic
Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable Programs, the 1999
book Genetic
Programming III: Darwinian Invention and Problem Solving, and the
2003 book Genetic
Programming IV: Routine
Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence. Click here to read chapter 1 of Genetic
Programming IV book in PDF format.
· 4,000+
published papers on genetic programming (as of November 28, 2003) in a
searchable bibliography (with many on-line versions of papers) by over 880
authors maintained by William Langdon’s and Steven M. Gustafson.
· For information on the Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers
· For information on the Genetic Programming book series from Kluwer Academic Publishers, see the Call For Book Proposals