Exploring Learning in Evolutionary Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Evolutionary artificial neural networks can adapt to new circumstances, and handle slight changes without catastrophic failure. However, under constantly changing circumstances, resulting in unpredictable grounds for evaluating success, the lack of memory of previous adaptations are a limiting factor. While further evolution can allow adaptations to new changes, the same is required for a return to a previous environment. To reduce the need for further evolution to deal with previously seen problems, this thesis looks at an approach to encourage previous knowledge to be retained across generations. It does this using back propagation in conjunction with an implementation of the HyperNEAT neuroevolutionary algorithm.