GECCO 2015

This is CBBOC’s inaugural year. It’s designed to provide the GECCO community with detailed performance comparisons of a wide variety of meta-heuristics and hyper-heuristics on combinatorial problems, where the real-world problems which induce combinatorial problems have been categorized into those with no training time (good fit for out-of-the-box algorithms such as the Parameter-less Population Pyramid), those with short training time (good fit for typical evolutionary algorithms), and those with long training time (good fit for hyper-heuristics).

The TORCS simulator also has an interface for Matlab and Simulink. This means that controllers can be developed for TORCS using Matlab. Using Matlab simply means that the whole hassle of interfacing with TORCS should become a lot easier. The source code is present at GitHub.

VerifiableAutonomy/TORCSLink

TORCSLink – An interface between The Open Source Race Car Simulator (TORCS) and MATLAB/Simulink (or anything else…)

TORCS is also available through Ubuntu’s software center. You can install it from here.

TORCS

TORCS, The Open Racing Car Simulator, is a car racing simulation, which allows you to drive in races against opponents simulated by the computer. You can also develop your own computer-controlled driver (also called a robot) in C or C++. TORCS is GPL (version 2 or later).

The following video shows how TORCS works on a user’s desktop.

TORCS Fuzzy Logic Robot

An AI racing robot wrote by me and my friend Miłosz Kosobucki as final assignment for Fuzzy Set Theory course (winter 2009/2010) at Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. It’s written in C and uses The Open Racing Car Simulator (http://torcs.sourceforge.net) API.

Photo by SFB579 Namaste

I contemplated a little on this idea today as I was asked by a couple of friends for ideas to work in cloud computing. So some of the ideas I gave in light of the memories I had from EuroGP are in order.

Evolutionary algorithms, and other machine learning algorithms, could be used to evolve (or improve) cloud operating systems, or parts of them. Implementation details aside, an evolutionary algorithm could silently monitor the user experience of a cloud operating system. One such operating system is OpenStack. Based on the feedback obtained by the monitors, the evolutionary algorithm could then update its future generations of solutions to those problems. The newer generations of solutions could be used as improvements to the existing solutions in the operating system.

For experimental purposes, evolutionary algorithms could be used to solve miniature problems that affect the user experience. As it may be envisioned, a lot of things add to the user experience of a complicated operating system for cloud computing. There is the graphical user interface that a user uses to interact and work with a computer or a cluster. Then there are parts of the kernel that should supposedly make the computing efficient and directly or indirectly affect the user experience.

A researcher could take one issue at a time. Let it be the graphical user interface, or a program that manages it. In the case of Ubuntu systems, it could be the unity desktop. Monitors could be embedded in a usability matrix which could keep track of various aspects of level of satisfaction of the user with the interface. Such monitors can then send data back to an evolutionary algorithm to update its state. Iteratively, the evolutionary algorithm can adapt and improve parts of the user interface (or unity desktop). Over multiple generations, and based on the feedback obtained from experience of many users, it can be hoped to improve the unity engine to great extent. Same can be done with other parts of the OS.

How to Master Ubuntu’s Unity Desktop: 8 Things You Need to Know

Ubuntu’s Unity desktop is a change of pace, whether you’re coming from Windows or another Linux distribution with a more traditional interface.

Photo by wwarby

1. 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp, wifi adapter installation.
2. TP-WN727 not working Ubuntu 14.04.
3. Kernel panic with cheap wifi USB adapter. Finally this works.
4. And also this.

Photo by Andrew Mason