Tandy Trower: Robotics Update

Intreasting Video. One of the first real life programs I wrote was an attempt to write a genetic sort for scheduling production across injection molding machines about 13 years ago so found this really intreasting!
The term "genetic algorithm" seems to intrigue almost everyone (including me, when I first heard about them years ago). The reality is that it's a relatively straightforward optimization technique wrapped in a fancy name. The word "genetic" makes it sound
like the algorithm is doing something biological in nature and many people then assume that it's an artificial intelligence technique...which it's not.
Charles recorded this interview a couple of hours after he read my blog post (gotta love Channel 9!), and my brain hadn't had a chance to think about how I might actually diagram or whiteboard genetic algorithms. I hope it was understandable.
If you'd like a very approachable introduction to optimization techniques like this, I'd highly recommend the book
Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran. It isn't only about optimization problems, but if you like algorithms, and you don't want/need to fully appreciate all of the theory, it's an extremely practical and useful book.
mswanson wrote:The term "genetic algorithm" seems to intrigue almost everyone (including me, when I first heard about them years ago). The reality is that it's a relatively straightforward optimization technique wrapped in a fancy name. The word "genetic" makes it sound like the algorithm is doing something biological in nature and many people then assume that it's an artificial intelligence technique...which it's not.
John Melville, MD wrote:
mswanson wrote:
The term "genetic algorithm" seems to intrigue almost everyone (including me, when I first heard about them years ago). The reality is that it's a relatively straightforward optimization technique wrapped in a fancy name. The word "genetic" makes it sound like the algorithm is doing something biological in nature and many people then assume that it's an artificial intelligence technique...which it's not.
The algorithm has a "biological" name because it is an almost element for element match for a very real bioloical process. Namely evolution.
The processes of mutation and crosover are not synthetic or allegorical. The chromosomes actually line up and exchange analagous segments of genetic material; this is called crossover. Chromosomes actually are subject to errors in copying that actually result in infreuent, but random mutations.
Perhaps the most interesting point of this is that computerized genetic algorithms have fed back into biology. A number of years ago a probabalistic arguement was made that the time required to evolved from an ameoba to a human being was many times the (currently believed) geologic age of the earth. The success of synthetic genetic algorithms causes some, including me, to re-examine that argument.