Tetsuya Higuchi - Böcker

Evolvable hardware (EHW) is based on the idea of combining a reconfigurable hardware device with genetic algorithms to execute reconfiguration autonomously. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and PLD (Programmable Logic Devices) are typical examples of reconfigurable hardware devices, for which there is already a market worth more than USD2 Billion US dollars and growing at 23 per cent per year. An example of EHW is NASA's Space Technology 5 nanosatellites, which are scheduled to start measuring Earth's magnetosphere in late 2004. They were designed by NASA engineers using genetic algorithms and 32 Linux PCs. The computers generated small antenna-constructing programs (the genotypes) and executed them to produce designs (the phenotypes). If deployed it will be the first piece of evolved hardware ever to be launched into space.

Evolvable hardware (EHW) refers to hardware whose architecture/structure and functions change dynamically and autonomously in order to improve its performance in carrying out tasks. The emergence of this field has been profoundly influenced by the progress in reconfigurable hardware and evolutionary computation. Traditional hardware can be inflexible – the structure and its functions are often impossible to change once it is created. However, most real world problems are not fixed – they change with time. In order to deal with these problems efficiently and effectively, different hardware structures are necessary. EHW provides an ideal approach to make hardware "soft" by adapting the structure to a problem dynamically. The contributions in this book provide the basics of reconfigurable devices so that readers will be fully prepared to understand what EHW is, why it is necessary and how it is designed. The book also discusses the leading research in digital, analog and mechanical EHW.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Evolvable Systems, ICES 2001, held in Tokyo, Japan in October 2001. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on evolutionary design of electronic circuits, embryonic electronics, biologically-based systems, evolutionary robotics, evolutionary optimization, evolutionary learning, and applications.