Connectionists: A new track at GECCO: Complex Systems

[Risto Miikkulainen]

GECCO 2016 will feature a new track this year called "CS - Complex
Systems," which combines and replaces the previous "Artificial
Life/Robotics/Evolvable Hardware" and "Generative and Developmental
Systems" tracks. The track description and important dates are below.

-- Terry Soule and Risto Miikkulainen
   CS Track Chairs

===================================================================
Complex Systems Track (CS)
2016 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2016)
July 20-24, 2016, Denver, Colorado, USA
http://gecco-2016.sigevo.org/

Important Dates:
Abstract Deadline:               January 27, 2016
Submission of Full Papers:       February 3, 2016
Conference:                      20-24 July, 2016

Track Description:
This track invites all papers addressing the challenges of scaling
evolution up to real-life complexity. This includes both the real-life
complexity of biological systems, such as artificial life models and
generative and developmental systems (GDS); and the real-world
complexity of physical systems, such as evolutionary robotics and
evolvable hardware.

Artificial life studies artificial systems (software, hardware, or
chemical) with properties similar to those of living systems. There are
two main complementary goals: to better understand living systems and to
use this understanding to build artificial systems with properties
similar to those of living systems, such as behavior, adaptability,
developmental or generative processes, evolvability, active perception,
communication, self-organization and cognition. This track also welcomes
models of problem-solving through (social) agent interaction, emergence
of collective phenomena and models of the dynamics of ecological
interactions in an evolutionary context.

Evolutionary robotics and evolvable hardware studies the evolution of
controllers, morphologies, sensors, and communication protocols that can
be used to build systems that provide robust, adaptive and scalable
solutions to the complexities introduced by working in real-world,
physical environments. This track welcomes contributions addressing
problems from control to morphology, from single robot to collective
adaptive systems. Approaches to incorporating human users into the
evolutionary search process are also welcome. Contributions are expected
to deal explicitly with Evolutionary Computation, with experiments
either in simulation or with real robots.