Many games are reliant on creating new and engaging content constantly to maintain the interest of their player-base. One such example are puzzle games, in such it is common to have a recurrent need to create new puzzles. Creating new puzzles requires guaranteeing that they are solvable and interesting to players, both of which require significant time from the designers. Automatic validation of puzzles provides designers with a significant time saving and potential boost in quality. Automation allows puzzle designers to estimate different properties, increase the variety of constraints, and even personalize puzzles to specific players. Puzzles often have a large design space, which renders exhaustive search approaches infeasible, if they require significant time. Specifically, those puzzles can be formulated as quadratic combinatorial optimization problems. This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm, empowered by expert-knowledge informed heuristics, for solving logical puzzles in video games efficiently, leading to a more efficient design process. We discuss multiple variations of hybrid genetic approaches for constraint satisfaction problems that allow us to find a diverse set of near-optimal solutions for puzzles. We demonstrate our approach on a fantasy Party Building Puzzle game, and discuss how it can be applied more broadly to other puzzles to guide designers in their creative process.
Bar-Ilan University（巴伊兰大学）；Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland（马里兰大学自动化研究中心）
In this paper we propose the first genetic algorithm (GA)-based solver for jigsaw puzzles of unknown puzzle dimensions and unknown piece location and orientation. Our solver uses a novel crossover technique, and sets a new state-of-the-art in terms of the puzzle sizes solved and the accuracy obtained. The results are significantly improved, even when compared to previous solvers assuming known puzzle dimensions. Moreover, the solver successfully contends with a mixed bag of multiple puzzle pieces, assembling simultaneously all puzzles.
In this paper we present a novel genetic algorithm (GA) solution to a simple yet challenging commercial puzzle game known as the Zen Puzzle Garden (ZPG). We describe the game in detail, before presenting a suitable encoding scheme and fitness function for candidate solutions. We then compare the performance of the genetic algorithm with that of the A* algorithm. Our results show that the GA is competitive with informed search in terms of solution quality, and significantly out-performs it in terms of computational resource requirements. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications o…
Bar-Ilan University（巴伊兰大学）；Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland（马里兰大学自动化研究中心）
In this paper we propose the first effective automated, genetic algorithm (GA)-based jigsaw puzzle solver. We introduce a novel procedure of merging two "parent" solutions to an improved "child" solution by detecting, extracting, and combining correctly assembled puzzle segments. The solver proposed exhibits state-of-the-art performance solving previously attempted puzzles faster and far more accurately, and also puzzles of size never before attempted. Other contributions include the creation of a benchmark of large images, previously unavailable. We share the data sets and all of our results …
Bar-Ilan University（巴伊兰大学）；Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland（马里兰大学自动化研究中心）
In this paper we introduce new types of square-piece jigsaw puzzles, where in addition to the unknown location and orientation of each piece, a piece might also need to be flipped. These puzzles, which are associated with a number of real world problems, are considerably harder, from a computational standpoint. Specifically, we present a novel generalized genetic algorithm (GA)-based solver that can handle puzzle pieces of unknown location and orientation (Type 2 puzzles) and (two-sided) puzzle pieces of unknown location, orientation, and face (Type 4 puzzles). To the best of our knowledge, ou…
Bar-Ilan University（巴伊兰大学）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）
In this paper we propose the first effective genetic algorithm (GA)-based jigsaw puzzle solver. We introduce a novel crossover procedure that merges two "parent" solutions to an improved "child" configuration by detecting, extracting, and combining correctly assembled puzzle segments. The solver proposed exhibits state-of-the-art performance, as far as handling previously attempted puzzles more accurately and efficiently, as well puzzle sizes that have not been attempted before. The extended experimental results provided in this paper include, among others, a thorough inspection of up to 30,74…
This paper presents the coupling of a building thermal simulation code with genetic algorithms (GAs). GAs are randomized search algorithms that are based on the mechanisms of natural selection and genetics. We show that this coupling allows the location of defective sub-models of a building thermal model i.e. parts of model that are responsible for the disagreements between measurements and model predictions. The method first of all is checked and validated on the basis of a numerical model of a building taken as reference. It is then applied to a real building case. The results show that the …
In this paper the Sudoku problem is solved using stochastic search techniques and these are: Cultural Genetic Algorithm (CGA), Repulsive Particle Swarm Optimization (RPSO), Quantum Simulated Annealing (QSA) and the Hybrid method that combines Genetic Algorithm with Simulated Annealing (HGASA). The results obtained show that the CGA, QSA and HGASA are able to solve the Sudoku puzzle with CGA finding a solution in 28 seconds, while QSA finding a solution in 65 seconds and HGASA in 1.447 seconds. This is mainly because HGASA combines the parallel searching of GA with the flexibility of SA. The RP…
Bar-Ilan University（巴伊兰大学）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）
This paper presents a novel scheme, based on a unique combination of genetic algorithms (GAs) and deep learning (DL), for the automatic reconstruction of Portuguese tile panels, a challenging real-world variant of the jigsaw puzzle problem (JPP) with important national heritage implications. Specifically, we introduce an enhanced GA-based puzzle solver, whose integration with a novel DL-based compatibility measure (DLCM) yields state-of-the-art performance, regarding the above application. Current compatibility measures consider typically (the chromatic information of) edge pixels (between adj…
Domain-Informed Genetic Superposition Programming: A Case Study on SFRC Beams
Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney（工程与信息科技学院，技术悉尼大学）；Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University（土木与建筑工程系，苏丹·卡布斯大学）；University Research and Innovation Center (EKIK), Obuda University（研究与创新中心（EKIK），奥布达大学）
We recently reported that the simple genetic algorithm (SGA) is capable of performing a remarkable form of sublinear computation which has a straightforward connection with the general problem of interacting attributes in data-mining. In this paper we explain how the SGA can leverage this computational proficiency to perform efficient adaptation on a broad class of fitness functions. Based on the relative ease with which a practical fitness function might belong to this broad class, we submit a new hypothesis about the workings of genetic algorithms. We explain why our hypothesis is superior t…
A deductive program synthesis tool takes a specification as input and derives a program that satisfies the specification. The drawback of this approach is that search spaces for such correct programs tend to be enormous, making it difficult to derive correct programs within a realistic timeout. To speed up such program derivation, we improve the search strategy of a deductive program synthesis tool, SuSLik, using evolutionary computation. Our cross-validation shows that the improvement brought by evolutionary computation generalises to unforeseen problems.
We propose a method for learning the neural network architecture that based on Genetic Algorithm (GA). Our approach uses a genetic algorithm integrated with standard Stochastic Gradient Descent(SGD) which allows the sharing of weights across all architecture solutions. The method uses GA to design a sub-graph of Convolution cell which maximizes the accuracy on the validation-set. Through experiments, we demonstrate this methods performance on both CIFAR10 and CIFAR100 dataset with an accuracy of 96% and 80.1%. The code and result of this work available in GitHub:https://github.com/haihabi/Gene…
Instituto de Telecomunicações（葡萄牙电信研究所）；Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon（里斯本大学高等理工学院）
Technical analysis is used to discover investment opportunities. To test this hypothesis we propose an hybrid system using machine learning techniques together with genetic algorithms. Using technical analysis there are more ways to represent a currency exchange time series than the ones it is possible to test computationally, i.e., it is unfeasible to search the whole input feature space thus a genetic algorithm is an alternative. In this work, an architecture for automatic feature selection is proposed to optimize the cross validated performance estimation of a Naive Bayes model using a gene…
We consider the optimization problem of constructing a binary orthogonal array (OA) starting from a bigger one, by removing a specified amount of lines. In particular, we develop a genetic algorithm (GA) where the underlying chromosomes are constant-weight binary strings that specify the lines to be cancelled from the starting OA. Such chromosomes are then evolved through balanced crossover and mutation operators to preserve the number of ones in them. The fitness function evaluates the matrices obtained from these chromosomes by measuring their distance from satisfying the constraints of an O…
Optimizing Container Loading and Unloading through Dual-Cycling and Dockyard Rehandle Reduction Using a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management（工业工程与管理系）；Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science（托马斯·劳德计算机科学系）；Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC)（范伯格工程学院，南加州大学（USC））；Department of Computer Science（计算机科学系）；American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB)（美国国际大学-孟加拉国（AIUB））
The Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is one of the models used for the multi-row layout problem with facilities of equal area. There are a set of n facilities and a set of n locations. For each pair of locations, a distance is specified and for each pair of facilities a weight or flow is specified (e.g., the amount of supplies transported between the two facilities). The problem is to assign all facilities to different locations with the aim of minimizing the sum of the distances multiplied by the corresponding flows. The QAP is among the most difficult NP-hard combinatorial optimization pro…
Cracow University of Technology（克拉科夫科技大学）；Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院理论与应用信息学研究所）
This study is focused on applying genetic algorithms (GA) to model and band selection in hyperspectral image classification. We use a forensic-inspired data set of seven hyperspectral images with blood and five visually similar substances to test GA-optimised classifiers in two scenarios: when the training and test data come from the same image and when they come from different images, which is a more challenging task due to significant spectra differences. In our experiments we compare GA with a classic model optimisation through grid search. Our results show that GA-based model optimisation …
Manipur Institute of Technology, Manipur University（曼尼普尔大学曼尼普尔理工学院）；Jadavpur University（贾达沃普尔大学）
This paper deals with the identification of Multiword Expressions (MWEs) in Manipuri, a highly agglutinative Indian Language. Manipuri is listed in the Eight Schedule of Indian Constitution. MWE plays an important role in the applications of Natural Language Processing(NLP) like Machine Translation, Part of Speech tagging, Information Retrieval, Question Answering etc. Feature selection is an important factor in the recognition of Manipuri MWEs using Conditional Random Field (CRF). The disadvantage of manual selection and choosing of the appropriate features for running CRF motivates us to thi…
A hybrid evolutionary algorithm with importance sampling method is proposed for multi-dimensional optimization problems in this paper. In order to make use of the information provided in the search process, a set of visited solutions is selected to give scores for intervals in each dimension, and they are updated as algorithm proceeds. Those intervals with higher scores are regarded as good intervals, which are used to estimate the joint distribution of optimal solutions through an interaction between the pool of good genetics, which are the individuals with smaller fitness values. And the sam…
The industrial wireless local area network (IWLAN) is increasingly dense, not only due to the penetration of wireless applications into factories and warehouses, but also because of the rising need of redundancy for robust wireless coverage. Instead of powering on all the nodes with the maximal transmit power, it becomes an unavoidable challenge to control the transmit power of all wireless nodes on a large scale, in order to reduce interference and adapt coverage to the latest shadowing effects in the environment. Therefore, this paper proposes an efficient genetic algorithm (GA) to solve thi…
In this paper, a nonlinear symbolic regression technique using an evolutionary algorithm known as multi-gene genetic programming (MGGP) is applied for a data-driven modelling between the dependent and the independent variables. The technique is applied for modelling the measured global solar irradiation and validated through numerical simulations. The proposed modelling technique shows improved results over the fuzzy logic and artificial neural network (ANN) based approaches as attempted by contemporary researchers. The method proposed here results in nonlinear analytical expressions, unlike t…
