A Test Bed for Developing Intelligent Synthetic Characters

1
A Test Bed for Developing Intelligent Synthetic
Characters

• A dozen researchers
• From Univ. of Michigan

2
Contributions

• Every existing computer game is an existence
  proof that you can create a game without
  human-level AI. ?
• Demonstrate that human-level AI can make a
  difference.
• Describe a test bed for pursuing research in
  developing human-level AI characters within
  computer games.

3
Requirement

• Flexible and low-cost development
• --use existing game software and tools
• Debugging/development environment
• --use existing debugging and development tools
• High performance
• --Shouldnt sacrifice performance in engine or
  interface
• --Support a large number of AI without
  sacrificing graphics performance
• --Able to run the game and engine on a single
  laptop

4
SGIO

• Soar General Input/Output
• Domain independent interface between Soar and an
  external environment
• Supports three low-level interfaces

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Model 1

• Advantages
• The game can run in full-screen mode and the
  other machine can run full debugging environment

• Drawbacks
• Overhead in SGIO to send information over the
  socket

6
Model 2

• Advantages
• Better performance than Model 1

• Drawbacks
• can run full debugging environment but not
  full-screen game

7
Model 3

• Advantages
• No overhead of the interface
• No overhead of the debugging environment

• Drawbacks
• Soar cant display any information during runtime

8
Future Work

• Create additional modules with well-defined
  interfaces
• Create a generalized version of SGIO for non-Soar
  architectures.