$10,000
in Prizes at the 5th Annual (2008) “HUMIES” Awards
For Human-Competitive Results
Produce by Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Monday May 26, 2008
www.human-competitive.org
CALL FOR ENTRIES
Techniques of genetic and evolutionary computation
are being increasingly applied to difficult real-world problems—often
yielding results that are not merely academically interesting, but
competitive with the
work done by creative and inventive humans. Starting at the Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in 2004, prizes were awarded
for human-competitive results that had been produced by some form of
genetic and evolutionary computation in the previous year.
Entries are now being solicited for awards totaling $10,000 for the
2008 awards for human-competitive results that have been produced by
any form of genetic and evolutionary computation (including, but not
limited to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies,
evolutionary programming, learning classifier systems, grammatical evolution,
gene expression programming, differential evolution, etc.) and that have
been published in the open literature between May 28, 2007 (the deadline
for the previous competition) and the deadline for 2008 entries, namely
Monday May 26, 2008. The competition will be held as part of the 2008
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO-2008) Conference.
Presentations of entries will be made at
the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2008). The
awards and prizes will be announced
and presented during the GECCO conference.
Cash prizes of $5,000 (gold), $3,000 (silver), and bronze (either one
prize of $2,000 or two prizes of $1,000) will be awarded for the best
entries that satisfy the criteria for human-competitiveness.
Find complete details at: www.human-competitive.org

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GECCO
2008 Contest Problems Here are the contest problems for 2008 and links
to all you will need to do them. This year we mean to push the bounds
of what is evolved by introducing some novel problems in fringe areas.
These problems are suitable for any EC practitioner. We welcome submissions
from all sources, from research groups through students.
Solving
Rubik’s Cube ($1,000 prize) SUBMISSION DEADLINE: July
6, 2008
In conjunction with Dr. Sean Luke of George Mason
University and under a research grant from NASA, Parabon Computation,
Inc. has developed the
Origin™ Evolutionary SDK, an extension of Dr. Luke’s ECJ
framework that runs on Frontier.
Contestants will be granted free access to Parabon’s
Frontier Grid Service, at 100 C of capacity, to perform evolutionary
jobs for
the competition, from 15 May 2008 through 6 July 2008 (the submission
deadline for the competition). The Frontier SDK comes with a grid simulator
that can be used locally for program development and testing before the
access window opens.
Contestants must evolve a Rubik’s Cube solver. Entries must be
submitted as a Java™ jar file with a class that supports a predefined
Solver interface. Entries will be tested on randomly scrambled cubes.
Winners will be based on the number of moves required to unscramble the
test cubes and the quality of the evolutionary algorithm (quality includes
factors such as autonomy, originality, and parsimony). [The
details]

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A
2D Packing Problem
Deadline: June 27th
This problem is a 2D variation of bin packing
problems, which requires new ways to evolve with a 2D chromosome.
The goal is to best pack a grid to maximize the sum of scores where
every unique pair of adjacent numbers in the grid has its own score.
[The
details]
Entrants must turn in their best grid and a brief summary of their evolutionary
algorithm. The winner is based on the best score and the quality of the evolutionary
algorithm.

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Human
Evaluation of Evolved L-System Images
Deadline: June 27th
The goal is to evolve an L-System that will recreate
a series of images in a defined number of cycles. Entrants must turn
in their L-System grammar, the series of images the L-System generates
and a brief summary of their evolutionary algorithm. You are provided
with restrictions on the L-system grammar, target images, and a function
to generate the series of images for any valid L-System. [The
details]
The submitted grammars will be run on the provided
L-system generator and compared by human inspection for how close they
are perceived to replicate features of the executed image. The judges
may or may not know what an L-system is. A human panel will judge the
quality of the images.

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Finding
a Balanced Diet in Fractal World
Deadline: June 27th
In a more complex variant of the Santa Fe trail, the goal is to evolve an agent
to search a landscape and find as much as possible of two types of food. The
landscape is a fractal with varying elevations and impassible regions. Problem
details, including sample training maps, and the requirements for the function,
including arguments and outputs, are defined through the details link. [The
details]
Entrants must turn in an ANSI C function representing
the best evolved agent and a brief summary of their evolutionary algorithm.
Scoring will be based on a fitness function that takes into account
not only the amount of the two types of food collected but the balance
between the two types of food. Submitted functions will be tested on
a number of random, test maps. The quality of the evolutionary algorithm
may be taken into account in the scoring.

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Contest Link
The contest problems will be supported at the GECCO contest website.
There you will find links to full problem descriptions, training data, news,
and contest submission instructions.

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