Take Darwin's ideas on the evolution of species to write computer programs that evolve.

Purpose

With this workshop I want to show people what genetic programming is and how it can be really fun to use to solve “difficult” programming tasks.

Depending on the programming skills of the audience, the algorithm and the example can be simpler or more complex.

Content

In a simpler session, what we do is take silly cleaning robots like this one:

And then borrow ideas from Darwin's theory of evolution to create better cleaning robots, like this one:

By the end of the workshop, the participant has finished a basic genetic algorithm that is able to create a robot like the second one, evolving it from the first one.

Past sessions

• 6th edition of an annual event organised by physics students at my university, on the 3rd of March of 2020.

Useful links

• Code for the vacuum cleaning robot – GitHub repo