JGProg - Groovy Java Genetic Programming

[Ivan Garcia]

Getting Started with

Groovy Java Genetic Programming

Genetic Programming (JGProg) is an open-source pure Java implementation of a strongly-typed Genetic Programming experimentation platform. Three example "worlds" are provided, in which a population evolves and solves the problem. Now that's Groovy.

What's Genetic Programming?

Genetic Programming (GP) is a subset of the field of Evolutionary Programming (EP) which is itself a subset of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Loosely and simply, AI is the subject of how machines can solve problems. Evolutionary Programming is the subject of how machines can solve problems using the software equivalents of the mechanisms of biological evolution. Genetic Programming is the subject of how machines can solve problems using the software equivalents of the mechanisms of biological evolution where the thing which is evolving is a program structured as a tree. This is as opposed to Genetic Algorithms (GA) where the thing which is evolving is a binary representation of a program, or more usually, parameters to a fixed, non-evolving program. There's also Neural Networks (NN) which is a subset of AI which attempts to solve problems by using modular neurons and a learning algorithm, and there's Artificial Life (A-Life, AL) which is a kind of subset of AI where the problem to solve is more biological than anything else (e.g. "survive by eating food and fighting rivals"). I say "kind of" because the "creatures" of A-Life can use any of the mechanisms of AI to solve the problem, including GP, GA, NN, etc.

Of course, this "hierarchy" hasn't prevented cross-pollination: GP has been used to generate neural networks, for example.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll just point you to an excellent What is GP? page written by Dr. GP himself, Dr. John Koza. And if you're really interested in stuff about Genetic Programming, there are many books you can buy. The best books by far are Dr. Koza's "trilogy"


Learn more: http://jgprog.sourceforge.net/about_jgprog.html
Em português: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computa%C3%A7%C3%A3o_evolucion%C3%A1ria