IT TRENDS
Take computing back to nature
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A British university has spun off the world's largest research group on evolutionary algorithms
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— Photo: S. Kannan
ENOUGH SPACE: There is a lesson to be learnt from the way weeds occupy all vacant spaces.
CREATING A timetable for a complex sports event like the Olympics can be a nightmare for planners. Thousands of participants, officials and support staff have to move with clockwork precision over limited space, without creating a logjam.
Can science suggest a foolproof solution? Maybe, if today's computational tools and techniques, look to nature for inspiration... a colony of ants, for example?
Method in movement
Ants may seem to wander randomly in search of food, but in fact there is method in their movement. When one ant finds the shortest path to a food source, others will follow, generating `positive feedback' that is passed on generously to all ants in the colony.
Need to create a new housing colony, with scope for growth, that takes note of encroachments from outside? Look at the `Invasive Weed Colony Optimisation' method, which is based on the way weeds seem to occupy all the vacant spaces.
Mathematicians look to such examples to generate what are known as `evolutionary algorithms', mathematical models inspired by the process of evolution — reproduction, mutation, recombination, natural selection, survival of the fittest.
Evolutionary (also called natural) computation tries to mimic these elegant natural processes to solve real-world problems... ranging from traffic congestion to credit card fraud detection. So successful has this trend proved, that entire teams of problem solvers are at work today, harnessing these nature-inspired computational tools to deliver a dizzying array of practical solutions.
Placing on the map
Arguably the largest such group worldwide — over 50 strong — is the Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications (CERCIA) (www.cercia.ac.uk) launched just 4 years ago, as a joint project of the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and `Advantage West Midlands', the local agency that is charged with putting the area on the entrepreneurial map of Britain.
CERCIA has quickly established its own brand name as the place to go to if you want nature-based solutions for some of today's corporate and business challenges.
A logistics company had a problem: how to pack as many goods as possible, all different sized, into the minimum number of transportation containers. CERCIA created a simple PC-based programme where you enter the sizes of the containers and the sizes of the good to be packed and a 3-D display tells you how to do it the best way.
The shortest possible route between two locations, key information when it comes to laying pipelines or data cables, is often constrained by factors like residential areas, `untouchable' archaeological sites. Evolutionary algorithms made short work of that problem too.
In an example that seems relevant to countries like India and China, CERCIA used artificial neural networks to create a solution for an Australian bank to assess credit card applications, a solution that could as well be used in insurance fraud detection and premium-setting for insurance.
Evolutionary algorithms, seem to be particularly apt for the pharma business where challenges like molecule interaction prediction, new substance creation or genetic programming are already intimately connected with nature.
Indeed, CERCIA's Business Manager Vishwanath Madhugiri, has been in India in recent months, talking to leaders in the knowledge process business and suggesting that evolutionary computation tools and techniques might just be the `agni asthra' that will give them the critical edge when they compete in the global outsourcing `maidan'.
Already partnered internationally by the likes of Honda, Unilever, Rolls Royce and Dow Chemicals, the Birmingham based centre hopes to work two ways in India — tying up with Indian customers for its solutions — and collaborating with educational and research leaders here to pursue joint research goals.
The mantra broadened
In every way it seems the mantra `back to nature' has broadened dramatically from naturopathy to nature-inspired computation. For the land that gave birth to ayurveda, this may come as no surprise!
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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