Activity-Based Credit Assignment Heuristic for Simulation-Based Stochastic Search in a Hierarchical Model Base of Systems

Synthesis of systems constitutes a vast class of problems. Although machine learning techniques operate at the functional level, little attention has been paid to system synthesis using a hierarchical model base. This paper develops an original approach for automatically rating component systems and composing them according to the experimental frames in which they are placed. Components are assigned credit by correlating measures of their participation (activity) in simulation runs with run outcomes. These ratings are employed to bias component selection in subsequent compositions.