Session:

MOD - Modularity, regularity and hierarchy in open-ended evolutionary computation

Title:

A Discussion Outline on Gene-Regulated Development, Modularity and EC

Authors:

Piet van Remortel

Abstract:

Bio-inspired development is often proposed as a mechanism that can exploit hierarchy and module reuse to alleviate the scalability problem in Evolutionary Computation. We discuss some concepts of modularization and module decomposition in a simple setup consisting of a GA combined with a gene-regulated development mapping. By means of the concept of activation propagation, we discuss modules that are inherent to the mechanism of gene-regulated development and discuss possible ways to map such modules on the concepts or module decomposability in the total loop from genome, over development, to phenotype and associated fitness value.