Refine
Departments, institutes and facilities
- Fachbereich Informatik (48)
- Institut für Technik, Ressourcenschonung und Energieeffizienz (TREE) (42)
- Fachbereich Ingenieurwissenschaften und Kommunikation (9)
- Internationales Zentrum für Nachhaltige Entwicklung (IZNE) (3)
- Institut für KI und Autonome Systeme (A2S) (1)
- Institut für Sicherheitsforschung (ISF) (1)
- Institute of Visual Computing (IVC) (1)
Document Type
- Conference Object (39)
- Article (11)
- Preprint (5)
- Report (5)
- Book (monograph, edited volume) (1)
- Part of a Book (1)
- Diploma Thesis (1)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Year of publication
Keywords
- Quality Diversity (4)
- Quality diversity (4)
- Bayesian optimization (3)
- MAP-Elites (3)
- Aerodynamics (2)
- Autoencoder (2)
- Evolutionary Computation (2)
- Evolutionary computation (2)
- Heart Rate Prediction (2)
- Lattice Boltzmann Method (2)
A new method for design space exploration and optimization, Surrogate-Assisted Illumination (SAIL), is presented. Inspired by robotics techniques designed to produce diverse repertoires of behaviors for use in damage recovery, SAIL produces diverse designs that vary according to features specified by the designer. By producing high-performing designs with varied combinations of user-defined features a map of the design space is created. This map illuminates the relationship between the chosen features and performance, and can aid designers in identifying promising design concepts. SAIL is designed for use with compu-tationally expensive design problems, such as fluid or structural dynamics, and integrates approximative models and intelligent sampling of the objective function to minimize the number of function evaluations required. On a 2D airfoil optimization problem SAIL is shown to produce hundreds of diverse designs which perform competitively with those found by state-of-the-art black box optimization. Its capabilities are further illustrated in a more expensive 3D aerodynamic optimization task.
The MAP-Elites algorithm produces a set of high-performing solutions that vary according to features defined by the user. This technique to 'illuminate' the problem space through the lens of chosen features has the potential to be a powerful tool for exploring design spaces, but is limited by the need for numerous evaluations. The Surrogate-Assisted Illumination (SAIL) algorithm, introduced here, integrates approximative models and intelligent sampling of the objective function to minimize the number of evaluations required by MAP-Elites.
The ability of SAIL to efficiently produce both accurate models and diverse high-performing solutions is illustrated on a 2D airfoil design problem. The search space is divided into bins, each holding a design with a different combination of features. In each bin SAIL produces a better performing solution than MAP-Elites, and requires several orders of magnitude fewer evaluations. The CMA-ES algorithm was used to produce an optimal design in each bin: with the same number of evaluations required by CMA-ES to find a near-optimal solution in a single bin, SAIL finds solutions of similar quality in every bin.
The encoding of solutions in black-box optimization is a delicate, handcrafted balance between expressiveness and domain knowledge between exploring a wide variety of solutions, and ensuring that those solutions are useful. Our main insight is that this process can be automated by generating a dataset of high-performing solutions with a quality diversity algorithm (here, MAP-Elites), then learning a representation with a generative model (here, a Varia-tional Autoencoder) from that dataset. Our second insight is that this representation can be used to scale quality diversity optimization to higher dimensions-but only if we carefully mix solutions generated with the learned representation and those generated with traditional variation operators. We demonstrate these capabilities by learning an low-dimensional encoding for the inverse kinemat-ics of a thousand joint planar arm. The results show that learned representations make it possible to solve high-dimensional problems with orders of magnitude fewer evaluations than the standard MAP-Elites, and that, once solved, the produced encoding can be used for rapid optimization of novel, but similar, tasks. The presented techniques not only scale up quality diversity algorithms to high dimensions, but show that black-box optimization encodings can be automatically learned, rather than hand designed.
This paper describes the development of a Pedelec controller whose performance level (PL) conforms to European standard on safety of machinery [9] and whose soft- ware is verified to conform to EPAC standard [6] by means of a software verification technique called model checking. In compliance with the standard [9] the hardware needs to implement the required properties corresponding to categories “C” and “D”. The latter is used if the breaks are not able to bring the velomobile with a broken motor controller to a full stop. Therefore the controller needs to implement a test unit, which verifies the functionality of the components and, in case of an emergency, shuts the whole hardware down to prevent injuries of the cyclist. The MTTFd can be measured through a failure graph, which is the result of a FMEA analysis, and can be used to proof that the Pedelec controller meets the regulations of the system specification. The analysis of the system in compliance with [9] usually treats the software as a black box thus ignoring its inner workings and validating its correctness by means of testing. In this paper we present a temporal logic specification according to [6], based on which the software for the Pedelec controller is implemented, and verify instead of only testing its functionality. By means of model checking [1] we proof that the software fulfills all requirements which are regulated by its specification.
During exercise, heart rate has proven to be a good measure in planning workouts. It is not only simple to measure but also well understood and has been used for many years for workout planning. To use heart rate to control physical exercise, a model which predicts future heart rate dependent on a given strain can be utilized. In this paper, we present a mathematical model based on convolution for predicting the heart rate response to strain with four physiologically explainable parameters. This model is based on the general idea of the Fitness-Fatigue model for performance analysis, but is revised here for heart rate analysis. Comparisons show that the Convolution model can compete with other known heart rate models. Furthermore, this new model can be improved by reducing the number of parameters. The remaining parameter seems to be a promising indicator of the actual subject’s fitness.
Analyzing training performance in sport is usually based on standardized test protocols and needs laboratory equipment, e.g., for measuring blood lactate concentration or other physiological body parameters. Avoiding special equipment and standardized test protocols, we show that it is possible to reach a quality of performance simulation comparable to the results of laboratory studies using training models with nothing but training data. For this purpose, we introduce a fitting concept for a performance model that takes the peculiarities of using training data for the task of performance diagnostics into account. With a specific way of data preprocessing, accuracy of laboratory studies can be achieved for about 50% of the tested subjects, while lower correlation of the other 50% can be explained.
The Fitness-Fatigue model (Calvert et al. 1976) is widely used for performance analysis. This antagonistic model is based on a fitness-term, a fatigue-term, and an initial basic level of performance. Instead of generic parameter values, individualizing the model needs a fitting of parameters. With fitted parameters, the model adapts to account for individual responses to strain. Even though in most cases fitting of recorded training data shows useful results, without modification the model cannot be simply used for prediction.
Are quality diversity algorithms better at generating stepping stones than objective-based search?
(2019)
The route to the solution of complex design problems often lies through intermediate "stepping stones" which bear little resemblance to the final solution. By greedily following the path of greatest fitness improvement, objective-based search overlooks and discards stepping stones which might be critical to solving the problem. Here, we hypothesize that Quality Diversity (QD) algorithms are a better way to generate stepping stones than objective-based search: by maintaining a large set of solutions which are of high-quality, but phenotypically different, these algorithms collect promising stepping stones while protecting them in their own "ecological niche". To demonstrate the capabilities of QD we revisit the challenge of recreating images produced by user-driven evolution, a classic challenge which spurred work in novelty search and illustrated the limits of objective-based search. We show that QD far outperforms objective-based search in matching user-evolved images. Further, our results suggest some intriguing possibilities for leveraging the diversity of solutions created by QD.
The way solutions are represented, or encoded, is usually the result of domain knowledge and experience. In this work, we combine MAP-Elites with Variational Autoencoders to learn a Data-Driven Encoding (DDE) that captures the essence of the highest-performing solutions while still able to encode a wide array of solutions. Our approach learns this data-driven encoding during optimization by balancing between exploiting the DDE to generalize the knowledge contained in the current archive of elites and exploring new representations that are not yet captured by the DDE. Learning representation during optimization allows the algorithm to solve high-dimensional problems, and provides a low-dimensional representation which can be then be re-used. We evaluate the DDE approach by evolving solutions for inverse kinematics of a planar arm (200 joint angles) and for gaits of a 6-legged robot in action space (a sequence of 60 positions for each of the 12 joints). We show that the DDE approach not only accelerates and improves optimization, but produces a powerful encoding that captures a bias for high performance while expressing a variety of solutions.
Microcontroller-based sensor systems offer great opportunities for the implementation of safety features for potentially dangerous machinery. However, in general they are difficult to assess with regard to their reliability and failure rate. This paper describes the safety assessment of hardware and software of a new and innovative sensor system. The hardware is assessed by standardized methods according to norm EN ISO 13849-1, while the use of model checking is presented as an approach to solve the problem of validating the software.