Abstract
This chapter describes how genetic programming was
used as an invention machine to automatically
synthesise a complete design for an aspherical optical
lens system (a type of lens system that is especially
difficult to design and that offers advantages in terms
of cost, weight, size, and performance over traditional
spherical systems). The genetically evolved aspherical
lens system duplicated the functionality of a recently
patented aspherical system. The automatic synthesis was
open-ended --- that is, the process did not start from
a pre-existing good design and did not pre-specify the
number of lenses, which lenses (if any) should be
spherical or aspherical, the topological arrangement of
the lenses, the numerical parameters of the lenses, or
the non-numerical parameters of the lenses. The
genetically evolved design is an instance of
human-competitive results produced by genetic
programming in the field of optical design.
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