Moderate Environmental Variation Promotes Adaptation in Artificial Evolution

10/22/2017

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by   Nicola Milano, et al.

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In this paper we analyze the role of environmental variations in the evolution of artificial agents situated in an external environment and we demonstrate how environmental variations promote the evolution of better agents. The beneficial effect is maximized at intermediate rates of variations, i.e. when the dynamics of the environment displays a sufficient level of stability and variability. The analysis of the obtained results indicate that the adaptive advantage provided by environmental variations is due to the fact that it increases the rate with which evolving agents change phylogenetically. The performance of the adaptive agents and the rate with which agents change phylogenetically are maximized at moderate rate of variations of the environment which provide a good tradeoff between environmental variation and stability.