Evolving a Faster Keyboard
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Presentation Transcript
Evolving a Faster Keyboard Christopher P Walker
Overview • Motivation • Algorithm Considerations • Design of the EA • The nonexistent preliminary results • Future Work
Motivation • More efficient work • authors, secretaries, and other people who depend on typing would be able to work faster • This project would be done faster.
Algorithm Considerations • Brute force methods will have to check at least 88! possible key combinations • Evolutionary Algorithms seem natural for this problem
Inner Workings of the EA • Two populations pools • Rank based reproductive selection • Deterministic proportional generational selection
Individual Characteristics • Each individual is represented by an array of keyboard locations. • Indexes into the array correspond to the key in question. • Allows for efficient key lookup and quicker evaluation.
Individuals (cont.) • The keyboard is divided into the following sections: ALPHA, NUMERIC, SYMBOLIC, and MODIFIER • Crossover and mutation will not be allowed to move key locations outside of their sections.
Individual Evaluation • The layout will be “tested” by typing out different words from the English Language. • Individuals will be rewarded for forcing the user to alternate fingers and hands, while being penalized for repetitive characters on the same finger and hand.
Individual Evaluation (cont.) • A word is randomly selected from a list, and is “typed” using the keyboard. • The keyboard is then scored based on how the word is typed, and the score is normalized over the length of the word. • The score is then averaged into the total score for the individual.
Individual Evaluation (Phase I) For Phase I, the scores are computed according to the following criteria • Three points are given each time two consecutive letters require a different hand, one point for different fingers, and two points for home row. • Two points are deducted if the same finger is used for a different row, one point is deducted for the same hand
Individual Evaluation (P II) Phase II will use values determined experimentally for the fitness function.
Word Sources • Words will be randomly selected from various sources • Initially they will be selected from the 1000 most used words in the English language. • Later the system will be asked to virtually type sentences from various sources
Sentence Sources Sentence Sources Include • The Bible, King James Version • Moby Dick, by Herman Melville • The Dark Tower V, by Stephen King • Dope, by Sax Rohmer
Reproduction - Crossover • Crossover will be based on the categories/divisions in the keyboard structure, not on individual key locations • Will probably be removed in later iterations.
Reproduction - Mutation • Mutation is accomplished by swapping the location of keys. • Currently only allowed to swap within their categorical restrictions. • Will become the only reproductive operator in future iterations, when the categories are removed.
Preliminary Results • No.
Future Work • Remove the categorical groupings of the keys. • Optimize the entire keyboard, not just the part that’s most commonly used. • Attempt to optimize the keyboard for other languages as well.