Empirical Study of the Influences of Genetic Parameters in the Training of a Neural Network

This paper presents the empirical results achieved in the computer system ROBOTS. This program simulates a virtual world, where agents, called robots, interact with an environment. Each robot is controlled by a neural network. The evolution of the robot behaviour (which is determined by the variation of the weights in the neural network) is done using a genetic algorithm. We describe the conceptual model used in ROBOTS. We also show how the genetic parameters and the environment itself influence the robot’s adaptation to the environment.