Evolutionary Development based on Genetic Regulatory Models for Behavior-Finding

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role, implications, and applications of a genetic-regulated developmental process in evolution. A novel formalism of string-regulated graph grammar, as an abstraction of biological development, is presented and studied. Founded on this formalism, evolutionary developmental models are introduced and tested. The results demonstrate the benefits of the models, compared to traditional direct encoding approaches, for the problems of form-finding and behavior-finding.