Evolution and control system design. The evolutionary game

The idea of mimicking biological processes has produced a number of useful engineering tools. This article does not advocate another biological approach to solving engineering problems, but rather it introduces some ideas about the evolutionary process that should appeal to those interested in dynamical systems, optimization, stability, and game theory. Understanding the evolutionary process involves all of this and more. We explore how an evolutionary process can take place in a set of differential equations, and examine some interesting links between stability and optimization. One of the interesting paradoxes we explore is how a "hill-climbing" algorithm can end up at a stable local minimum and why this might have important implications in understanding speciation. Finally, we examine some connections between evolution and control system design.