ECJ is a research EC system written in Java. It was designed to be highly flexible, with nearly all classes (and all of their settings) dynamically determined at runtime by a user-provided parameter file. All structures in the system are arranged to be easily modifiable. Even so, the system was designed with an eye toward efficiency; ECJ may make you reconsider notions about Java and slowness.
ECJ is presently developed at George Mason University's ECLab Evolutionary Computation Laboratory. The software has nothing to do with its initials' namesake, Evolutionary Computation Journal.
Features
General Features
- Platform-independent checkpointing and logging
- Hierarchical parameter files
- Multithreading
- Mersenne Twister Random Number Generators
- Abstractions for implementing a variety of EC forms.
EC Features
- Asynchronous island models over TCP/IP
- Genetic Algorithms/Programming style Steady State and Generational evolution, with or without Elitism
- Evolutionary-Strategies style (mu,lambda) and (mu+lambda) evolution
- Very flexible breeding architecture
- Many selection operators
- Multiple subpopulations and species
- Inter-subpopulation exchanges
- Reading populations from files
- Single- and Multi-population coevolution
- SPEA2 multiobjective optimization
- Hooks for other multiobjective optimization methods
- Packages for parsimony pressure
| GP Features
- Set-based Strongly-Typed Genetic Programming
- Ephemeral Random Constants
- Automatically-Defined Functions and Automatically Defined Macros
- Multiple tree forests
- Six tree-creation algorithms
- Extensive set of GP breeding operators
- Seven pre-done GP application problem domains (ant, regression, multiplexer, lawnmower, parity, two-box, edge)
Vector (GA/ES) Features
- Fixed-Length and Variable-Length Genomes
- Arbitrary representations
- Five pre-done vector application problem domains (sum, rosenbrock, sphere, step, noisy-quartic)
Other Features
- Multiset-based genomes in the rule package, for evolving Pitt-approach rulesets or other set-based representations.
- Hooks for using the Teambots robot simultation system to do evaluation.
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Download ECJ
Download ECJ version 11 as ec.tar.gz or (bigger) ec.zip. The license agreement and online documentation of the system is also available.
ECJ is released under a special open source license. Please read the license before using the software. See the provided README file to locate the software license.
Mailing Lists
If you have questions or ideas regarding ECJ, we suggest you join the ECJ-INTEREST Discussion List. You can also view the archives. If you want to report a bug, you can contact the ECJ authors directly at ecj-help @ cs.gmu.edu
Migrating from the Previous Version
As usual, check the CHANGES file. But the big four are:
- ECJ 11 now allows fitnesses to be negative. This won't affect you unless you have code which assumes positive fitnesses but for some reason you have applications which (previously erroneously) provide negative fitnesses.
- Additions to RandomChoice now allow distributions of all zeros (which are treated as uniform). This permits, for example, populations of individuals with ALL zero probabilities. Accordingly, for example, BreedingSource.setupProbabilities now allows all of the children to have zero probabilities.
- Coevolution has been redesigned to permit both single- and multi-population coevolution. Certain functions have had slight changes to their arguments.
- The SPEA2 package has been overhauled, bug-fixed, and cleaned up; some classes no longer exist.
The Agent
The software license refers to the "Agent". Presently, that's Sean Luke.
Other Publically-Available Java-Based Evolutionary Computation Systems
- GP Systems
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- Tree-based GP, implemented with trees
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- Tree-based GP, implemented with arrays
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- GP Applets
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- GP using Java Bytecode
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- Private GP Systems
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- GP: Whereabouts Unknown
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- gpjpp
- gpjava, originally developed at ASyG, Vrje Universiteit Brussel.
- Other EC Stuff in Java
This is just a small sample, of course.
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