[dexderp]

Interesting. Is there a way to do this in a 3d physics based simulation environment. It would be cool to see if a genetic algorithm could be used to discover new aerodynamic configurations for drones/other platforms in simulation.

I don't know enough about genetic algorithms to say for certain. Anyone have any reference materials for someone that's just started looking into this?

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Not exactly what you're asking but Topology Optimization is now a standard feature of the big CAD packages. It allows the designer to express various constraints and goals, then a combination of gradient methods and genetical algorithms are used to find an optimized part. Example: https://www.solidworks.com/media/topology-optimization

[msarchet]

It’s the simulation and fitness function that are difficul not the genetic algorithm really.

I’ve done a bunch of playing around with NEAT, a variant of GA using NNs, for various things. Typically for GA stuff though you have a genome, aka some set of instructions for an individual, a fitness function for scoring them, and then you generate new individuals from those genomes for the next population.

Original Paper on NEAT here:

https://nn.cs.utexas.edu/downloads/papers/stanley.ec02.pdf

Lots of good resources here.

https://nn.cs.utexas.edu/

[orthecreedence]

I love the NEAT algorithm. I did version of it for my senior project in high school, and have done a few iterations since, mostly with bugs that eat food and avoid predators. I'm about due for another round.