Almost three years ago, I published an article about robot contents,
describing those events as a fun way for colleges and universities to
showcase student design projects. Students can learn team work,
demonstrate their skills, compare approaches, meet future employers,
and just have fun and enjoy themselves. They are very inspiring events
- when people from different parts of the world gather to present their
work, you can get a good idea of the current state of the art, and
where it needs to be pushed.
Many of the contests
described in the previous article are still alive or even more popular.
However, if you are not so good with the soldering iron and prefer
"softer" side of AI, several new programming and writing contests will
enable you to gain more publicity and share your thoughts with other
developers.
Talking about the advanced programming contests, Artificial Intelligence Research (Ai) recently announced that it is sponsoring the Second Learning Machine Challenge (LMC2). The preceding challenge
took place in 2001 and was attended by 95 individuals and
organizations. Designed to promote machine learning algorithms for
computerized language acquisition. This years challenge is organized
and supervised by the LMC2 steering committee.
The goal is to create a computer program that can perform well at a
language game without knowing the syntax, grammar or rules of the
language. Sounds confusing? The official rules of the competition and
all related information are available from the <LMC2 Web site section,
which includes a downloadable test suite, with the judge program that
will be used to run the tournament, model games and simple player
programs, and a complete Software Development Kit (SDK).
Submissions will compete against programs written by other competitors
in a set of language games. The creator of the winning program will win
a $2000 prize and the representatives of the top three winning programs
will be invited to an artificial intelligence workshop at the Ai
Research Center. The final deadline for entries to the Learning Machine
Challenge is October 31, 2002.
Chatterbot
constructors are probably aware of two similar large-scale annual
events, Loebner Prize and Chatterbox Challenge. I described the
concepts and ideas behind these competitions in an earlier article.
As a judge in the Chatterbox Challenge, I was amazed to see how much
energy, effort and emotions were invested into the process of creating
a successful bot. The 2002 edition is now closed, and you can find the official results and more details on the winning bots in the news section.
Sodarace is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to construct virtual racing robots. It is based on the Sodaconstructor,
an online Java application that simulates the basics laws of physics.
Your algorithms will use the Sodarace API (Application Programming
Interface) to construct computer-generated virtual robots. Robots
created by both humans and machines will race against each other over a
variety of simulated terrains and in the resulting Sodarace league
we'll see how human creativity measures up against the best of machine
learning. Interested? The Sodarace forum is the best place to discuss you plans and ideas.
This review wouldn't be complete without mentioning two popular robot strategy/programming games. MindRover
is "the Intelligent Robot Simulation", or perhaps you can call it a 3D
strategy/programming game. This is a new genre that encompasses the
depth of play found in strategy games with a new concept in player
control. You get to program the intelligence of robotic vehicles.
RobotWar3D
is a non-arcade game designed to challenge your programming skill and
strategic thinking. Robots may be programmed in Visual Basic, C/C++,
Delphi or any other language that can access a Windows 32 bit DLL. Both
games gave a large number of fans that regularly organize tournaments
and competitions.
You
are not an experienced programmer, but would like to publish
high-quality AI-related articles? No problem, just write an essay,
tutorial, or article in English of over 1,000 words and submit it to
the AI Article Writing Contest
at AI Depot. You don't necessarily have to know much about you topic,
as you can submit an introductory article about a technique or
application and learn along the way. The deadline is July 1st 2002, and
the winner gets "AI Programming Wisdom", the highly acclaimed game
development book.
