Competitions and Awards:

Evolutionary Art Competition

GPUs for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation

Simulated Car Racing Championship

Demolition Derby

7th Annual HUMIES Awards Finalists and winners of the GECCO-2010 Competitions:

Evolutionary Art Competition



Finalists

GalaBoids, by Alain Lioret, Université Paris VIII, France.

Picbreeder, by Jimmy Secretan, Nicholas Beato, David B. D’Ambrosio, Adelein Rodriguez, Adam Campbell, Jeremiah T. Folsom-Kovarik, and Kenneth O. Stanley.

NEAT Drummer, by Amy K. Hoover and Kenneth O. Stanley, University of Central Florida, USA.

Evolving Assemblages, by Fernando Graça and Penousal Machado, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal.

Winner Evolving Assemblages, by Fernando Graça and Penousal Machado, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal. For details on that submission, see: http://evolving-assemblages.dei.uc.pt.

GPUs for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation



Submissions

GPU-based Parallel Hybrid Genetic Algorithms, The Van Luong, Nouredine Melab, El-Ghazali Talbi.

Speeding up the BioHEL evolutionary learning system using GPGPUs, María A. Franco, Natalio Krasnogor, Jaume Bacardit.

High Performance Parallel Disease Detection: an Artificial Immune System for GPUs, Nicholas A. Sinnott-Armstrong , Delaney Granizo-Mackenzie, Jason H. Moore.

Computational Fluid Dynamics on GPUS for Genetic Programming Fitness Evaluation, Jason Normore, Simon Harding, Wolfgang Banzhaf.

Winner High Performance Parallel Disease Detection: an Artificial Immune System for GPUs, Nicholas A. Sinnott-Armstrong , Delaney Granizo-Mackenzie, Jason H. Moore.

2010 Simulated Racing Car Championship



Submissions

AUTOPIA, E. Onieva, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid.

J. Muñoz, Carlos III University of Madrid.

S. Pohl, M. Preuss, J. Quadflieg and T. Delbrügger, TU Dortmund.

Joseph Alton, University of Birmingham.

Winner AUTOPIA, E. Onieva, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid. GECCO-2010 Demolition Derby



No submission received.

Human-Competitive Competition (HUMIES) Winners Human-Competitive Competition (HUMIES) Winners



Bronze Medal Michael Schmidt and Hod Lipson

Solving Iterated Functions Using Genetic Programming Thomas Bäck et al.

Optimizing Medical Image Analysis Systems Silver Medal Marc Schoenauer et al.

An Evolutionary Metaheuristic for Domain-Independent Satisficing Planning Gold Medal Natalio Krasnogor et al.

Evolutionary Design of Energy Functions for Protein Structure Prediction

COMPETITIONS:

Evolutionary Art Competition

Organizers

Scott Draves, Electric Sheep

Christian Gagné, Université Laval

Jeffrey Ventrella, independent

artist/researcher



Call:

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This competition invites conference participants to demonstrate that genetic and evolutionary

computation can be applied to create impressive and provocative works of art. The competition

will identify the best work, be it an image, a sculpture, a music score, a video, an interactive

online experience, or a system that exhibits some form of independent creativity.



Entry Submission

Entrants must submit: (1) a brief artistic statement illustrating the concept, (2) a short paper

describing the technical details, and (3) a set of multimedia files to illustrate the result of the

evolutionary process. Artists can either submit five still images, or a video of up to 5 minutes, or

a sound file of up to 5 minutes. All submissions should be sent to

by June 18, 2010.



Evaluation

The submissions will be evaluated by a jury of researchers from the evolutionary computation

and the technological arts communities, who will evaluate the submissions on the following

criteria: originality (50 %), technical quality (30 %), and relevance to evolutionary art and the

goals of the competition (20 %). Presentation

Finalists selected by the jury will be invited to present their submission at the competition

session, held during the GECCO conference. The winner of the competition will be announced

at the SIGEVO meeting ceremony, on July 11, 2010.



IJART Special Issue

Best submissions to the competition will be invited to propose a paper on their artwork for a special issue in the International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART). Important Dates Submission deadline: June 18, 2010

Conference: July 7-11, 2010

Journal paper submission (on invitation): November 1, 2010

Expected issue: September 2011 Evaluation Committee Bruce Damer, Contact Consortium and Biota.org

Simon Penny, UC Irvine

Craig Reynolds, Sony Computer Entertainment (US R&D)

Hiroko Sayama, Binghamton University

Karl Sims

Osher Yadgar, SRI International



GPUs for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Organizers

Simon Harding, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

David Luebke, NVIDIA

Pier Luca Lanzi, Politecnico di Milano

Edmondo Orlotti, NVIDIA

Antonino Tumeo, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA Call:

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We are pleased to announce the official start of the GPU competition of GECCO-2010 with the

publication of the competition rules and the scoring system.



The Goal

This competition focuses on the applications of genetic and evolutionary computation that can

maximally exploit the parallelism provided by low-cost consumer graphical cards. The

competition will award the best applications both in terms of degree of parallelism obtained, in

terms of overall speed-up, and in terms of programming style.



Rules and Regulations

Entrants must submit (1) the application sources with the instructions to compile it and (2) a two

page description of the application. Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of

researchers from the evolutionary computation community and from industry. Each reviewer

will score the submission according to 12 criteria concerning the submitted algorithm, the

speed-up it achieves, and its impact on the evolutionary computation community. The total

score will be obtained as the weighted sum of the 12 separate scores.



Submissions should be mailed to no later than June 23, 2009. The final scores will be announced during GECCO.



Important Dates Submission deadline: June 23rd 2010

Conference: July 7th-11th 2010 Scoring

Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of researchers from the evolutionary computation

community and from industry who will score each submission according to the following criteria. Algorithm (50% of the total score)

Novelty 10% Does the algorithm exploit the GPU in a novel way?

(e.g., not just for fitness evaluation?) Efficiency 10% Does the algorithm efficiently use the GPU? GPU-side 10% How much of the algorithm is implemented GPU side? Elegance 5% Is the algorithm simple, easy to understand? Portability 5% Is the code parameterized for different GPU architectures and/or across vendors? Suitability 10% Does it use features of the GPU architecture logically and to the advantage of the program? Speed (20% of the total score)

Speedup 10% How much is the speed up compared to a well coded CPU version? Resources 5% What is the resource utilization?

(Ideally a program should use the 100% of the GPU). Scalability 5% Will it scale? E.g. to new hardware, multiple GPUs, GPUs with fewer/more processors? Evolutionary Computation (30% of the total score)

Utility 10% Do the results benefit the EC/GA/GP community? Practicality 10% Were the results practically obtainable without GPU acceleration? Science 10% Is the system used to generate better quality science?

For example, increasing statistical significance, increasing coverage of test cases or demonstrating greater generalization.



2010 Simulated Car Racing Championship Organizers

Daniele Loiacono (Politecnico di Milano)

Luigi Cardamone (Politecnico di Milano)

Martin V. Butz (University of Würzburg)

Pier Luca Lanzi (Politecnico di Milano) Call:

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swf We are pleased to announce the start of the 2010 Simulated Car Racing Championship, an event

joining three simulated car racing competitions held at: ACM GECCO-2010, Portland (USA), July 7th - 11th

IEEE WCCI-2010, Barcelona (Spain), July 18th - July 23rd

IEEE CIG-2010, Copenhagen (Denmark), August 18th - August 21st The Goal

The goal of the championship is to design a controller for a racing car that will compete on a set

of unknown tracks first alone (against the clock) and then against other drivers. The controllers

perceive the racing environment through a number of sensors that describe the relevant

features of the car surroundings, of the car state, and the game state.The controller can perform

the typical driving actions (clutch, changing gear, accelerate, break, steering the wheel, etc.)



New Features

The 2010 Championship introduces several innovations in comparison with the 2009 edition: the range of the proximity sensors have been increased from 100m to 200m

the position of the range finders can be customized by users

new focus sensor provides accurate sensing of the road ahead

noise is introduced to range and proximity sensors

drivers now control the clutch

a new warm-up stage allows drivers to learn about track properties before the qualifying Previous competitors can enter the competition with only small additional effort since the 2010

APIs are very similar to the ones used for the 2009 edition.



Rules and Regulations

TThe championship consists of nine races on nine different tracks divided into three legs, one for

each conference, involving three Grand Prix competitions each. Teams will be allowed to submit

a different driver to each leg. Each Grand Prix consists of three stages: the warm-up, the

qualifying, and the race. During the warm-up, drivers race alone to collect useful information about the tracks and tune

their behaviors. During the qualifying, drivers races alone on the tracks; the eight fastest drivers

participate in the main race. The main event consists of eight three lap races on each of the

three tracks. At the end of each race, the drivers are scored using the F1 system. The driver

performing the fastest lap in the race will get two additional points. The driver completing the

race with the smallest amount of damage will also get two extra points.



As in the previous edition, the tracks used in each leg are unknown to the competitors.



Championship Legs

Each leg will focus on a specific track type and will involve a dierent number of laps: American Leg (GECCO-2010), three motor speedways and 50 laps.

Formula Leg (WCCI-2010), three technical (F1-like) tracks and 15 laps.

Dusty Leg (CIG-2010), three dirt tracks (non-asphalt streches and bumps) and 25 laps.

Important Dates American Leg (GECCO-2010): Submission deadline June 27th 2010

Conference: July 7th-11th 2010 Formula Leg (WCCI-2010): Submission deadline: July 7th 2010

Conference: July 18th-23rd 2010 Dusty Leg (CIG-2010): Submission deadline: August 8th 2010

Conference: August 18th-21st 2010 Competition Software

The competition software, including servers for Linux & Windows, and C++ and Java clients, can

be downloaded from the competition webpage: http://cig.dei.polimi.it/



For inquiries send an email to

2010 GECCO-2010 Demolition Derby Organizers

Martin V. Butz (University of Würzburg

Matthias J. Linhardt (University of Würzburg)

Daniele Loiacono (Politecnico di Milano)

Luigi Cardamone (Politecnico di Milano)

Pier Luca Lanzi (Politecnico di Milano) Call:

PDF

swf We are pleased to announce the GECCO-2010 Demolition Derby Competition.



The Goal



The goal of Demolition Derby is simple: wreck all opponent cars by crashing into them without

getting wrecked yourself.



To provide spectacular and entertaining non-stop action, Demolition Derby takes place on a

very small circular track (surface: asphalt, length: 640m, width: 90m, number of laps: 1000) and

includes special changes in comparison to the regular racing competition: 1. The range of the 36 opponent sensors has been increased to 300m.

2. Cars do not take any damage when colliding with walls.

3. Cars do not take any damage in the front when colliding with each other.

4. Cars do take the doubled amount of damage in the rear when colliding with each other.

5. The last car standing is declared winner of the match. All racing controllers participating in Demolition Derby have to qualify for the final showdown

match by competing with each other in preliminary 1-vs-1-matches. The best eight controllers

then fight each other at the same time in the final match. The last car standing in the final match

is declared Winner of the GECCO-2010 Demolition Derby Competition.



Rules and Regulations



The competition is split into two phases: the preliminary 1-vs-1-matches and the final

all-vs-all-match of the best eight controllers.



In the preliminary 1-vs-1-matches, every controller drives against every other controller, one at

a time. After each match, the car with less damage is declared winner and earns one point. The

sum of points earned in all 1-vs-1-matches determines a controller's ranking. Each match has a

maximum duration of 15.000 ingame timesteps (5min simulated time).



The best eight controllers according to this ranking compete with each other in the final

all-vs-all-match. All eight controllers are placed on the track at the same time and, therefore, have

to deal with multiple opponents at once. Every time a car gets wrecked, the damage of all other

cars is reset to zero.



Winner is the last car standing in the final match, ranking of the other seven cars is determined by

the sequence of retirement.



Important Dates



There will be two Demolition Derby competitions, one at GECCO-2010 (Genetic and Evolutionary

Computation Conference) and another at CIG-2010 (Symposium on Computational Intelligence

and Games):

GECCO-2010 Submission deadline: June 27th 2010

Conference: July 7th-11th 2010 CIG-2010 Submission deadline: August 8th 2010

Conference: August 18th-21st 2010 Competition Software

More information on rules, procedure, and submission dates please are available at the oficial

Demolition Derby website: http://www.coboslab.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/competitions/ For inquiries send an email to

Human-Competitive Results: 7th Annual HUMIES Awards Oral presentations: Friday 9 July, 10:40-12:20, Salon D.

Awards presentation: 8:30-10:10, Oregon Ballroom Prizes Totaling $10,000 to be Awarded Award prizes are sponsored by Third Millennium On-Line Products Inc.

Techniques of genetic and evolutionary computation are being increasingly applied to difficult real-world problems?often yielding results that are not merely interesting and impressive, but competitive with the work of 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.



Humie finalists will give short oral presentations about human-competitive results that they have produced by any form of genetic and evolutionary computation (e.g., genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, learning classifier systems, grammatical evolution, etc.). 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. The judging committee includes: Wolfgang Banzhaf (Treasurer of SIGEVO)

Erik Goodman (Member, SIGEVO Executive Committee) John R. Koza (Vice Chair of SIGEVO) Darrell Whitley (Chair of SIGEVO) Riccardo Poli (Member, SIGEVO Executive Committee)