Knowledge-Aware Evolutionary Transformer

With the Transformer architecture achieving impressive results in the vision domain. It has become a current popular research to explore more potentials of Transformer mixed architectures and explore more suitable mixed combinations. In this paper, Transformer classification network is designed and explored by multi-task architecture search algorithm. A new paradigm for multi-task architecture is designed by combining convolution and Transformer. The designed search architecture can combine the respective advantages of convolution and Transformer and can obtain better performance. At the same time, corresponding knowledge-aware multi-task genetic operators are designed to generate offspring individuals. Inter-task and inter-experience knowledge-aware is utilised to facilitate evolutionary convergence. During the search process, the reference evaluation method is utilised to reduce the redundant computation and time during the search process. In the experimental section, the search results are compared with state-of-the-art architectures and search algorithms. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness and high generalisation of the searched architectures. The ablation experimental part proves the effectiveness of the proposed architectural paradigm, genetic operators and reference evaluation.