Enhancing MAP-Elites with multiple parallel evolution strategies
File(s)3638529.3654089.pdf (2.71 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Flageat, Manon
Lim, Bryan
Cully, Antoine
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
With the development of fast and massively parallel evaluations in many domains, Quality-Diversity (QD) algorithms, that already proved promising in a large range of applications, have seen their potential multiplied. However, we have yet to understand how to best use a large number of evaluations as using them for random variations alone is not always effective. High-dimensional search spaces are a typical situation where random variations struggle to effectively search. Another situation is uncertain settings where solutions can appear better than they truly are and naively evaluating more solutions might mislead QD algorithms. In this work, we propose MAP-Elites-Multi-ES (MEMES), a novel QD algorithm based on Evolution Strategies (ES) designed to exploit fast parallel evaluations more effectively. MEMES maintains multiple (up to ~ 100) simultaneous ES processes, each with its own independent objective and reset mechanism designed for QD optimisation, all on just a single GPU. We show that MEMES outperforms both gradient-based and mutation-based QD algorithms on black-box optimisation and QD-Reinforcement-Learning tasks, demonstrating its benefit across domains. Additionally, our approach outperforms sampling-based QD methods in uncertain domains when given the same evaluation budget. Overall, MEMES generates reproducible solutions that are high-performing and diverse through large-scale ES optimisation on easily accessible hardware.
Date Issued
2024-07-14
Date Acceptance
2024-07-14
Citation
Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, 2024, pp.1082-1090
Publisher
ACM
Start Page
1082
End Page
1090
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
Copyright Statement
© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3638529.3654089
Source
GECCO '24: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
Place of Publication
VIC, Melbourne, Australia
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2024-07-14
Finish Date
2024-07-18
Date Publish Online
2024-07-14