Taxonomy

The Cultural Algorithm is an extension to the field of Evolutionary Computation and may be considered a Meta-Evolutionary Algorithm. It more broadly belongs to the field of Computational Intelligence and Metaheuristics. It is related to other high-order extensions of Evolutionary Computation such as the Memetic Algorithm.

Inspiration

The Cultural Algorithm is inspired by the principle of cultural evolution. Culture includes the habits, knowledge, beliefs, customs, and morals of a member of society. Culture does not exist independent of the environment, and can interact with the environment via positive or negative feedback cycles. The study of the interaction of culture in the environment is referred to as Cultural Ecology.

Strategy

The information processing objective of the algorithm is to improve the learning or convergence of an embedded search technique (typically an evolutionary algorithm) using a higher-order cultural evolution. The algorithm operates at two levels: a population level and a cultural level. The population level is like an evolutionary search, where individuals represent candidate solutions, are mostly distinct and their characteristics are translated into an objective or cost function in the problem domain. The second level is the knowledge or believe space where information acquired by generations is stored, and which is accessible to the current generation. A communication protocol is used to allow the two spaces to interact and the types of information that can be exchanged.

Implementation

http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/nature-inspired/physical/cultural_algorithm.rb