Year: 2009

Article, News, Philosophy, Science

Evolutionary Computation

There is a portuguese version of this post.

Evolutionary computing (EC) has been widely used in recent years, and every year there are new applications for the techniques developed, despite being a relatively new area, few people are giving attention to that (at least in my vision and I will explain why) probably will have a promising and revolutionary future in relation to how we can generate innovation and even learn from it, especially as it relates to Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs).

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Article, News, Philosophy, Science

Computação Evolutiva

A Computação Evolutiva (EC) tem sido sido muito utilizada nos últimos anos, e a cada ano que passa, surgem novas aplicações para as técnicas desenvolvidas; apesar de ser uma área relativamente nova, pouca gente está dando a devida atenção ao que (ao menos na minha visão, e vou explicar porque) provavelmente terá um futuro promissor e revolucionário em relação à como podemos gerar a inovação a até mesmo aprender com ela, principalmente no que se relaciona com Algoritmos Evolutivos (EAs).

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Genetic Algorithms, News, Science

Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics

From the Wired article:

Initially, the equations generated by the program failed to explain the data, but some failures were slightly less wrong than others. Using a genetic algorithm, the program modified the most promising failures, tested them again, chose the best, and repeated the process until a set of equations evolved to describe the systems. Turns out, some of these equations were very familiar: the law of conservation of momentum, and Newton’s second law of motion.

I’m very happy with this news article, I had a similiar idea some time ago, but little different, I’m currently developing it. While in development I always asked myself if it’ll works, but with this good news, maybe it works, but I’ve many work to do yet =)

Read the full article

UPDATE 08/04: you can read the supplemental materials and the report on the Cornell CCSL site.

Genetic Algorithms, Pyevolve, pys60, Python

TSP on Nokia N73 using PyS60 and Pyevolve

As I promised on the post about Pyevolve on N73, I’ve ported the TSP problem to run on the cellphone. The script will draw the best individual of every generation on the screen using the PyS60 Canvas API. The quality of the video is very low, I’m using another cellphone with VGA only recording.

When I have time, I’ll release the source-code here in the same post. The TSP code is the same used in PSP, but ported to use the Canvas API of PyS60.

I hope you enjoy.

UPDATE 24/04: the source-code can be downloaded here.

News, pys60, Python

Good news for Python community

Good news for Python community ! PyS60 1.9.3 was released and now we have touch support ! Follow the list of changes from the project site:

Python core is upgraded to 2.5.4

– Touch event support is added to appuifw Canvas. An API is added to appuifw
module, touch_enabled() for checking if the device supports touch input.

– scribble application developed using PyS60 touch feature is available in the
installer.

– This release includes a new extension module, sciptext. This is an enabler for
using S60 Platform Service APIs that were introduced in the S60 5th Edition
and back ported on S60 3rd edition FP2, from Python. It supports services like
Application Manager, Calendar, Contacts, Landmarks, Location, Logging,
Messaging, Media Management, Sensors and Sys Info. Refer scriptext module
documentation for the usage and the convention for accessing the platform
Service API interfaces is subjected to change.

– Easier runtime deployment: Python runtime and its dependent components can be
installed by just running the scriptshell application that comes with 1.9.3
release. This feature is available only from S60 3rd edition FP2 devices
onwards and also these devices should have been updated with the latest
firmware. The easier runtime deployment support will be available with all
ensymble packaged applications in future releases.

– SSL support for socket is enabled

See more on the release announce.

PyS60 is a great piece of code between the mobile open-source projects ! Congratulations for the team !

I’ve done the port of TSP problem for Nokia N73 as promised, it’s working very smoothly and the Canvas API of PyS60 is amazing and fast, I’ll post the video and source-code soon.

PyS60 related links

Download of PyS60 installation

Nokia project home

Nokia forum (get started)

Genetic Algorithms, genetic programming, News, Pyevolve, Python, Time Waste

Genetic Algorithms on cellphones ! Pyevolve on Nokia N73 (Symbian + PyS60)

Hello ! This is the 2nd post related to the Pyevolve on portable devices, the first was in the Sony PSP here and the PoC of Pyevolve solving the TSP problem with a graphical output of best individuals on the Sony PSP screen. Now, it’s time to go further and run Pyevolve into the most portable device used by us, the cellphone.

Using the new version of the PyS60, the release 1.9.1, which comes with the new amazing 2.5.1 Python core, I’ve executed the Pyevolve with no problem, and I was very surprised by the performance of the GA on the Nokia N73, the GA I’ve ran is the minimization of one of the De Jogn’s test suite functions, the Sphere function, the function is very simple and I’ve used 5 real variables between the interval of [-5.12, 5.12], the Gaussian Real Mutator and the Single Point Crossover of the Pyevolve framework. Also I’ve set a population size of 80 individuals and the mutation rate of 2% and crossover rate of 90%.

After 18 generations (about 8 seconds), the GA ended with the best score of 0.0, representing the optimal minimization of the De Jong’s Sphere function.

Follow some screenshots of the adventure (click on the pictures to enlarge):

How to install Pyevolve on the PyS60 ?

1) First, you need to install the PyS60 for your Symbian platform. Here is the installation manual. The order of the installation is: Python Runtime for S60, Python Script Shell and PIPS Library.

2) Then, you must create a directory on your Memory Card, inside the “Python” directory, named “Lib”, and inside this directory, you copy the “pyevolve” folder. The absolute folder structure will be like this:

MemoryCard:\Python\Lib\pyevolve

Some features of the framework will not work, like the some DB Adapters, however, the GA core is working really good. I’ve used the Pyevolve subversion release r157, but it should works with the 0.5 release too. I’ve not finished the documentation of the new release, I’m working on some features yet.

Here is the source code I’ve used to minimize the De Jong’s Sphere function:

import e32
print "Loading Pyevolve modules...",
e32.ao_yield()

from pyevolve import G1DList, GSimpleGA
from pyevolve import Initializators, Mutators, Consts

print " done !"
e32.ao_yield()

def sphere(xlist):
   n = len(xlist)
   total = 0
   for i in range(n):
      total += (xlist[i]**2)
   return total

def ga_callback(ga_engine):
   gen = ga_engine.getCurrentGeneration()
   best = ga.bestIndividual()
   print "Generation %d - Best Score: %.2f" % (gen, best.score)
   e32.ao_yield()

   return False

if __name__ == "__main__":

   genome = G1DList.G1DList(5)
   genome.setParams(rangemin=-5.12, rangemax=5.13, bestRawScore=0.00, roundDecimal=2)
   genome.initializator.set(Initializators.G1DListInitializatorReal)
   genome.mutator.set(Mutators.G1DListMutatorRealGaussian)

   genome.evaluator.set(sphere)

   ga = GSimpleGA.GSimpleGA(genome)
   ga.setMinimax(Consts.minimaxType["minimize"])
   ga.setGenerations(100)
   ga.setMutationRate(0.02)
   ga.terminationCriteria.set(GSimpleGA.RawScoreCriteria)
   ga.stepCallback.set(ga_callback)

   ga.evolve()

   best = ga.bestIndividual()
   print "\nBest individual score: %.2f" % (best.score,)

You can note the use of the module “e32” of the PyS60, this is used to process pending events, so we can follow the statistics of current generation while it evolves.

I hope you enjoyed this work, the next step is to port the TSP problem to cellphone =)

Some time ago I’ve asked Guido van Rossum on the Google Moderator about the future of Python for mobile phones (aka PyS60), and here is the full answer from him:

I’m hopeful, but concerned that Java has cornered this market. For example, the Android development kit is extremely slick but only supports Java at the moment. There’s no doubt about which is the dominant app development language on most mobile platforms, including S60 and anything Symbian-based. In the long run I expect Python to just happen on mobile devices, as increases in disk space will allow the set of pre-installed tools to grow. In the mean time I see a bigger role for Python server-side, for example there are iPhone apps backed by services written in Python running on App Engine (and probably also apps backed by Python running on other server platforms).
Guido van Rossum, San Francisco Bay Area

Well, I think that with this new version of PyS60, with the 2.5.1 core, the Python on mobiles can be very useful and productive. Recently, Nokia have signed a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to the tune of €500 million ($623.9 million). According to Reuters, the five-year loan will be used in part to “finance software research and development (R&D) projects Nokia is undertaking during 2009-2011 to make Symbian-based smartphones more competitive.” So I’m with great expectations with this new investment on Symbian smartphones and with the future possibilities of the PyS60.