[mlpack] GSoC Proposal for implementing HyperNEAT and es-HyperNEAT

[PESALADINNE PRANAV REDDY .]

Hey everyone, My name is Pranav Reddy and my idea for GSoC is to implement
HyperNEAT and if time permits es-HyperNEAT as well. I feel like this is a
good idea since as far as I've seen there are so few HyperNEAT
implementations out there.

All of this would be using the NEAT implementation that was added last year
as HyperNEAT relies on it. HyperNEAT also involves CPPNs which I plan to
implement first. Since CPPNs are very similar to ANNs this shouldn't be too
much of a problem.
Following which I will implement HyperNEAT based off of the paper
http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/publications/2009/stanley-alife09. For this we
would mainly be applying the NEAT algorithm to a CPPN. I will also be
implementing a user defined substrate as described in the aforementioned
paper.

On completion of HyperNEAT, if time permits I would also like to implement
Evolvable Substrate HyperNEAT() as it builds off of HyperNEAT directly. For
this, the substrate would also have to evolve with each generation. Further
details can be found in this paper:
http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/publications/2012/risi-alife12. I will only
complete this if there is time of course but I hope that I am able to.

Of course testing is also a very important part and I will test each method
in the following ways:
CPPN :
I think the best test for this would be creating images using CPPNs to view
spatial patterns such as bilateral symmetry,  imperfect symmetry,
repetition with variation, etc. as can be seen here : http://picbreeder.org/
.
HyperNeat :
For now my idea is to test this using the visual discrimination experiment
in the paper http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/publications/2009/stanley-alife09. If
I can think of a better experiment or if anyone has any suggestions I will
do that.
es-HyperNEAT:
As of yet, I have not been able to find any experiment that does not
involve using robots in a controlled environment so any suggestions for
this test would be greatly appreciated.

Another reason I think this project would be appropriate is that it is a
very sequential project which will result in at least something solid being
merged into the codebase in case everything planned is not completed on
time. I will provide a more detailed phase by phase implementation
hopefully in a few days for the same.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also sorry if it was a long read.
Thanks in advance.
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