EPIC will automatically construct Evolutionary Program Improvement Collaborators (called Epi-Collaborators) that suggest code changes that improve software according to multiple functional and non-functional objectives.
The Epi-Collaborator suggestions will include transplantation of code from a donor system to a host, grafting of entirely new features grown (evolved) by the Epi-Collaborator, and identification and optimisation of tuneable deep parameters (that were previously unexposed and therefore unexploited).
A key feature of the EPIC approach is that all of these suggestions will be underpinned by automatically-constructed quantitative evidence that justifies, explains and documents improvements.
EPIC aims to introduce a new way of developing software, as a collaboration between human and machine, exploiting the complementary strengths of each; the human has domain and contextual insights, while the machine has the ability to intelligently search large search spaces.
The EPIC approach directly tackles the emergent challenges of multiplicity: optimising for multiple competing and conflicting objectives and platforms with multiple software versions.
