Chair:
Andy M Tyrrell www.elec.york.ac.uk/staff/academic/amt.html
Members:
Eduardo Sanchez lslwww.epfl.ch/pages/staff/sanchez
Adrian Stoica ehw.jpl.nasa.gov
Pauline Haddow www.idi.ntnu.no/~pauline/homepg/pauline-eng.html
Jason Lohn ic.arc.nasa.gov/people/jlohn/
Lukas Sekanina www.fit.vutbr.cz/~sekanina/
John Gallagher carl.cs.wright.edu/~johng/
Tetsuya Higuchi
The objective of evolvable hardware (EHW) is to design
systems that can self-adapt as necessary to compensate for changing
operational environments or to survive and recover from faults. EHW
uses simulated evolution to search for new hardware configurations.
The evolution is performed by a variety of different stochastic search
algorithms such as genetic algorithms (GAs), evolutionary programming
(EP) or evolution strategies (ES). The EHW is implemented on reconfigurable
devices such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), field programmable
analog arrays (FPAAs) or field programmable transistor arrays (FPTAs).
Each device is configured with a binary bit-stream that determines the
architecture (and thus function) and the purpose of the simulated evolution
is to find the best performing architecture for the given application.
EHW techniques have been successfully used for both original system design
and online adaptation of existing systems.
Evolvable hardware techniques enable self-reconfigurability
and adaptability of programmable devices and thus have the potential
to significantly increase the functionality of deployed hardware systems.
Evolvable hardware is expected to have major impact on deployable
systems for space missions and defense applications that need to survive
and perform at optimal functionality during long duration in unknown,
harsh, and/or changing environments. Evolvable hardware is also expected
to greatly enrich the area of commercial applications in which adaptive
information processing is needed; such applications range from human-oriented
hardware interfaces and internet adaptive hardware to automotive applications.
There are a few books that highlight, to varying degrees, evolvable hardware:
* "Evolutionary Electronics" from Zebulum et. Al., CRC Press
* "Genetic Programming", From Koza et Al, MIT Press.
* "Evolvable Components", from Sekanina, Springer Verlag
* "Hardware Evolution: Automatic design of electronic circuits
in reconfigurable hardware by artificial evolution", from Thompson,
Springer-Verlag.
Some important upcoming events related to evolvable hardware
are the following:
European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2007) http://www.ecal2007.org/
GECCO 2007 http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2007/
2007 IEEE Intenational Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics http://www.ieeesmc.org/
2008 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence http://www.wcci2008.org/
Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS-2007) http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/ahs2007/AHS.htm
Workshop on Hardware Architectures for Genetic, Neural and
Fuzzy Systems http://www.isebis.eng.uerj.br/HARD-GNF.html
International Conference on Evolvable Systems http://www.eccug.cn/ices2007.html
If you have any questions, please write to amt@ohm.york.ac.uk
Last updated 24 May 2007