Find largest circle not overlapping with others using genetic algorithm - genetic-algorithm

Question

I'm using GA, so I took example from this page (http://www.ai-junkie.com/ga/intro/gat3.html) and tried to do on my own.
The problem is, it doesn't work. For example, maximum fitness does not always grow in the next generation, but becomes smallest. Also, after some number of generations, it just stops getting better. For example, in first 100 generations, it found the largest circle with radius 104. And in next 900 largest radius is 107. And after drawing it, I see that it can grow much more.
Here is my code connected with GA. I leave out generating random circles, decoding and drawing.
private Genome ChooseParent(Genome[] population, Random r)
{
double sumFitness = 0;
double maxFitness = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < population.Length; i++)
{
sumFitness += population[i].fitness;
if (i == 0 || maxFitness < population[i].fitness)
{
maxFitness = population[i].fitness;
}
}
sumFitness = population.Length * maxFitness - sumFitness;
double randNum = r.NextDouble() *sumFitness;
double acumulatedSum = 0;
for(int i=0;i<population.Length;i++)
{
acumulatedSum += population[i].fitness;
if(randNum<acumulatedSum)
{
return population[i];
}
}
return population[0];
}
private void Crossover(Genome parent1, Genome parent2, Genome child1, Genome child2, Random r)
{
double d=r.NextDouble();
if(d>this.crossoverRate || child1.Equals(child2))
{
for (int i = 0; i < parent1.bitNum; i++)
{
child1.bit[i] = parent1.bit[i];
child2.bit[i] = parent2.bit[i];
}
}
else
{
int cp = r.Next(parent1.bitNum - 1);
for (int i = 0; i < cp; i++)
{
child1.bit[i] = parent1.bit[i];
child2.bit[i] = parent2.bit[i];
}
for (int i = cp; i < parent1.bitNum; i++)
{
child1.bit[i] = parent2.bit[i];
child2.bit[i] = parent1.bit[i];
}
}
}
private void Mutation(Genome child, Random r)
{
for(int i=0;i<child.bitNum;i++)
{
if(r.NextDouble()<=this.mutationRate)
{
child.bit[i] = (byte)(1 - child.bit[i]);
}
}
}
public void Run()
{
for(int generation=0;generation<1000;generation++)
{
CalculateFitness(population);
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(maxFitness);
population = population.OrderByDescending(x => x).ToArray();
//ELITIZM
Copy(population[0], newpopulation[0]);
Copy(population[1], newpopulation[1]);
for(int i=1;i<this.populationSize/2;i++)
{
Genome parent1 = ChooseParent(population, r);
Genome parent2 = ChooseParent(population, r);
Genome child1 = newpopulation[2 * i];
Genome child2 = newpopulation[2 * i + 1];
Crossover(parent1, parent2, child1, child2, r);
Mutation(child1, r);
Mutation(child2, r);
}
Genome[] tmp = population;
population = newpopulation;
newpopulation = tmp;
DekodePopulation(population); //decoding and fitness calculation for each member of population
}
}
If someone can point on potential problem that caused such behaviour and ways to fix it, I'll be grateful.

Answer 1

Welcome to the world of genetic algorithms!
I'll go through your issues and suggest a potential problem. Here we go:
maximum fitness does not always grow in the next generation, but becomes smallest - You probably meant smaller. This is weird since you employed elitism, so each generation's best individual should be at least as good as in the previous one. I suggest you check your code for mistakes because this really should not happen. However, the fitness does not need to always grow. It is impossible to achieve this in GA - it's a stochastic algorithm, working with randomness - suppose that, by chance, no mutation nor crossover happens in a generation - then the fitness cannot improve to the next generation since there is no change.
after some number of generations, it just stops getting better. For example, in first 100 generations, it found the largest circle with radius 104. And in next 900 largest radius is 107. And after drawing it, I see that it can grow much more. - this is (probably) a sign of a phenomenon called premature convergence and it's, unfortunately, a "normal" thing in genetic algorithm. Premature convergence is a situation when the whole population converges to a single solution or to a set of solutions which are near each other and which is/are sub-optimal (i.e. it is not the best possible soluion). When this happens, the GA has a very hard time escaping this local optimum. You can try to tweak the parameters, especially the mutation probability, to force more exploration.
Also, another very important thing that can cause problems is the encoding, i.e. how is the bit string mapped to the circle. If the encoding is much too indirect, it can lead to poor performance of the GA. GAs work when there are some building blocks in the genotype which can be exchanged between among the population. If there are no such blocks, the performance of a GA is usually going to be poor.

Answer 2

I have implemented this exercise and achieved good results. Here is the link:
https://github.com/ManhTruongDang/ai-junkie
Hope this can be of use to you.