Routine automated synthesis of five patented analog circuits using genetic programming

摘要

This article reports on a project in which we browsed patents issued after January 1, 2000 to commercial enterprises or university research institutions for analog electrical circuits. We then employed genetic programming to automatically design (synthesize) entities that duplicated the functionality of five post-2000 issued patents. The automated method works from a high-level statement of the circuit's intended function. The article addresses the question of what is actually delivered by the operation of the artificial problem-solving method in relation to the amount of intelligence that is supplied by the humans employing the method (something we refer to as the yield of an automated method). The article also addresses the question of the routineness of the artificial problem-solving method – that is, the amount of effort required to make the transition from problem to problem within a particular domain. The conclusion is that the artificial method routinely delivers high-yield, human-competitive (i.e., previously patented) results.