Tread: a new genetic programming representation aimed at research of long term complexity growth

Several forms of computer program (or representation) have been proposed for Genetic Programming (GP) systems to evolve, such as linear, tree based or graph based. Typically, GP representations are highly effective during the initial search phases of evolution but stagnate before deep levels of complexity are acquired. A new representation, TREAD, is proposed to combine aspects of flow of execution and flow of data systems. The distinguishing features of TREAD are designed for researching improvements to the long term acquisition of novel features in GP (at the expense of the speed of the initial search if necessary). TREAD is validated on a symbolic regression problem and is found to be capable of successfully developing solutions through artificial evolution