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CMA-TWEANN: efficient optimization of neural networks via self-adaptation and seamless augmentation

Published: 07 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Neuroevolutionary algorithms are successful methods for optimizing neural networks, especially for learning a neural policy (controller) in reinforcement learning tasks. Their significant advantage over gradient-based algorithms is the capability to search network topology as well as connection weights. However, state-of-the-art topology evolving methods are known to be inefficient compared to weight evolving methods with an appropriately hand-tuned topology. This paper introduces a novel efficient algorithm called CMA-TWEANN for evolving both topology and weights. Its high efficiency is achieved by introducing efficient topological mutation operators and integrating a state-of-the-art function optimization algorithm for weight optimization. Experiments on benchmark reinforcement learning tasks demonstrate that CMA-TWEANN solves tasks significantly faster than existing topology evolving methods. Furthermore, it outperforms weight evolving techniques even when they are equipped with a hand-tuned topology. Additional experiments reveal how and why CMA-TWEANN is the best performing weight evolving method.

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  • (2023)Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning: A SurveyIntelligent Computing10.34133/icomputing.00252Online publication date: 10-May-2023
  • (2018)Model parameter adaptive instance-based policy optimization for episodic control tasks of nonholonomic systemsProceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion10.1145/3205651.3208295(1426-1433)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2018
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cover image ACM Conferences
GECCO '12: Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
July 2012
1396 pages
ISBN:9781450311779
DOI:10.1145/2330163
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 07 July 2012

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Author Tags

  1. neuroevolution
  2. reinforcement leanring
  3. tweann

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GECCO '12
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GECCO '12: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
July 7 - 11, 2012
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning: A SurveyIntelligent Computing10.34133/icomputing.00252Online publication date: 10-May-2023
  • (2018)Model parameter adaptive instance-based policy optimization for episodic control tasks of nonholonomic systemsProceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion10.1145/3205651.3208295(1426-1433)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2018
  • (2018)Time series forecasting by recurrent product unit neural networksNeural Computing and Applications10.1007/s00521-016-2494-229:3(779-791)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2018
  • (2016)Neuroevolution: Problems, algorithms, and experiments2016 IEEE 10th International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies (AICT)10.1109/ICAICT.2016.7991745(1-4)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2016)The role of decision tree representation in regression problems - An evolutionary perspectiveApplied Soft Computing10.1016/j.asoc.2016.07.00748:C(458-475)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
  • (2016)Sparse Neural Network Models of Antimicrobial Peptide-Activity RelationshipsMolecular Informatics10.1002/minf.20160002935:11-12(606-614)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2016
  • (2015)Toward the Whole Brain Simulation of Insect BrainThe Brain & Neural Networks10.3902/jnns.22.8922:3(89-102)Online publication date: 2015
  • (2014)Sample efficiency improvement on neuroevolution via estimation-based elimination strategyProceedings of the 2014 international conference on Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems10.5555/2615731.2616050(1537-1538)Online publication date: 5-May-2014
  • (2014)Is MO-CMA-ES superior to NSGA-II for the evolution of multi-objective neuro-controllers?2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)10.1109/CEC.2014.6900433(2809-2816)Online publication date: Jul-2014
  • (2013)Cooperative Transport by a Swarm Robotic System Based on CMA-NeuroES ApproachJournal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics10.20965/jaciii.2013.p093217:6(932-942)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2013
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