Integrating Multiple Sources of Knowledge into Designer Soar, an Automatic Algorithm Designer

Abstract

Designing algorithms requires diverse knowledge about general problem-solving, algorithm design, implementation techniques, and the application domain. The knowledge can come from a variety of sources, including previous design experience, and the ability to integrate knowledge from such diverse sources appears critical to the success of human algorithm designers. Such integration is feasible in an automatic design system, especially when supported by the general problem-solving and learning mechanisms in the Soar architecture. Our system, Designer-Soar, now designs several simple generate-and-test and divide-and-conquer algorithms. The system already uses several levels of abstraction, generalizes from examples, and learns from experience, transferring knowledge acquired during the design of one algorithm to aid in the design of others.