Dealing with rounding error problems in evolutionary physical simulation

This paper introduces the problem of floating-point rounding errors in physical simulation. A simple virtual creature is simulated in a physical environment for a specified number of time steps. The effect of rounding errors is illustrated by varying the initial position of the creature which causes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArtificial life and robotics Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 158 - 162
Main Authors Pilat, Marcin L., Suzuki, Reiji, Arita, Takaya
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Japan Springer Japan 01.10.2012
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence
Computation by Abstract Devices
Computer Science
Control
Mechatronics
Original Article
Robotics
Artificial life
Virtual creatures
Rounding errors
Physical simulation
Floating-point
Evolutionary computation
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Summary:This paper introduces the problem of floating-point rounding errors in physical simulation. A simple virtual creature is simulated in a physical environment for a specified number of time steps. The effect of rounding errors is illustrated by varying the initial position of the creature which causes a change in the fitness value computed by a simple distance-based fitness function. With a large evaluation time, these rounding errors can produce significantly large differences in fitness. A discussion is provided on the importance of this finding for evolutionary simulations, including suggestions to alleviate the problem.
ISSN:1433-5298
1614-7456
DOI:10.1007/s10015-012-0038-0