Not All Balls Are Round: An Investigation of Alternative Recognition-Region Shapes

The purpose of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, it aims to demonstrate empirically that networks evolved using different shaped recognition regions in a real-valued shape-space exhibit different dynamics during their formation, and vary in both their capabilities to tolerate antigens and in their memory capacity. Secondly, the paper serves as a useful comparison to previous published work which investigated the properties of a network evolving in a simple, small Hamming shape-space. This work represents the first steps in a proper analysis of a real-valued shape-space with differing recognition shapes. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the experiments presented illustrate the importance of paying careful attention to the choice of recognition region and algorithm parameters when applying an AIS based on a network-model to practical problems.