MODULAR_QD

CAUTION: This library is directly integrated in Sferes2, so you don't need to add this library as an additional module anymore.

A sferes2 module for modular Quality-Diversity algorithm.

Authors:

• Antoine Cully [email protected]

Other Contributors:

This new framework is based on the existing MAP-Elites module for sferes2 (https://github.com/sferes2/map_elites). Therefore, many thanks to its authors:

• Jean-Baptiste Mouret [email protected]
• Danesh Tarapore

Reference:

• Cully, A. & Demiris, Y. (2016). Quality and Diversity Optimization: A Unifying Modular Framework. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (under review).

Installation:

First you need to install Sferes2 (https://github.com/sferes2/sferes2) as Modular_QD is module for this framework.

cd /your/workspace/folder/
git clone https://github.com/sferes2/sferes2.git

At the same location, you can clone the Modular_qd repository:

git clone https://github.com/sferes2/modular_QD.git

In order to link Sferes with the Modular_QD, we need to create a symbolic link:

cd sferes2/exp/
ln -s ../../../modular_QD ./

The configuration of Sferes can then include the additional requirements for Modular_QD:

cd -   #back to sferes root folder
./waf configure --cpp14=yes --exp modular_QD

Experimental scenarios using the physical simulator Robdyn will need additional configurations, for instance:

./waf configure --cpp14=yes --exp modular_QD --simu /location/of/simulation --robdyn /location/of/robdyn --controller /location/of/the/hexapod/controller

for more detail, please refer to these repositories: https://github.com/resibots/robdyn https://github.com/resibots/hexapod_simu https://github.com/resibots/hexapod_common

After the configuration, the experiments can directly be compiled with:

./waf --exp modular_QD

This command will compile all the scenrios and variants defined in exp/modular_QD/wscript. This may represent a long compilation time. To specify which scenario needs to be compile, you can use this command:

./waf --exp modular_QD --target name_of_my_scenario_and_variant

For instance, if you want to quickly test the library, you can do:

./waf --exp modular_QD --target test_qd

As another example, if you want to compile the "scenario_arm" with the "Grid" container and the "Random" selection operator (this configuration corresponds to the MAP_Elites algorithms), you can use this command:

./waf --exp modular_QD --target scenario_arm_grid_random

The binary are located in the "build" folder. For instance, in order to run the previously compiled scenario:

./build/exp/modular_QD/scenario_arm_grid_random

Creating your own scenario:

You can add you own scenario in the 'exp/modular_QD/wscript' script and call compile them with the commands introduced in the previous section.