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Methods for competitive co-evolution: Finding opponents worth beating


Author(s) : Richard K. Belew Christopher D. Rosin, 
Publisher : N/A
Publication Date : 1995
ISSN : N/A
Abstract : Co-evolution refers to the simultaneous evolution of two or more genetically distinct populations with coupled fitness landscapes. In this paper we consider "competitive co-evolution, " in which the fitness of an individual in a "host " population is based on direct competition with individual(s) from a "parasite " population. Competitive coevolution is applied to three game-learning problems: Tic-Tac-Toe (TTT), Nim and a small version of Go. Two new techniques in competitive co-evolution are explored. "Competitive fitness sharing " changes the way fitness is measured, and "shared sampling " alters the way parasites are chosen for testing hosts. Experiments using TTT and Nim show a substantial improvement in performance when these methods are used. Preliminary results using co-evolution for the discovery of cellular automata rules for playing Go are presented.,