Abstract not found

Abstract. In electronics, there are two major classes of circuits, analog and digital electrical circuits. While digital circuits use discrete voltage levels, analog circuits use a continuous range of voltage. The synthesis of analog circuits is known to be a complex optimization task, due to the continuous behaviour of the output and the lack of automatic design tools; actually, the design process is almost entirely demanded to the engineers. In this research work, we introduce a new clonal selection algorithm, the elitist Immune Programming, (eIP) which uses a new class of hypermutation operators and a network-based coding. The eIP algorithm is designed for the synthesis of topology and sizing of analog electrical circuits; in particular, it has been used for the design of passive filters. To assess the effectiveness of the designed algorithm, the obtained results have been compared with the passive filter discovered by Koza and co-authors using the Genetic Programming (GP) algorithm. The circuits obtained by eIP algorithm are better than the one found by GP in terms of frequency response and number of components required to build it. 1

This study describes a novel simulation model of the process of product invention. Invention is conceptualized as a process of directed evolutionary adaptation, on a landscape of product design possibilities, by a population of profitseeking agents (inventors). The simulation experiments examine the sensitivity of the rate of advance in product fitness to the choice of search heuristics employed by inventors. The key finding of the experiments is that if search heuristics are confined to those which are rooted in past experience, or to heuristics which merely generate variety, limited product advance occurs. Notable product fitness advance only occurs when inventor’s expectations as to the relative fitness of potential product inventions are incorporated into the model of invention. The results demonstrate the importance of human direction and expectations in invention. They also support the importance of formal product / project evaluation procedures in organizations, and the importance of market information when inventing new products.