SICSA DVF, Associate Professor Ian Watson; “Neuroevolution for Micro-management in the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft: Brood War”

Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/10/2014
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location
B.2, Merchiston Campus, Edinburgh Napier University


Neuroevolution for Micro-management in the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft: Brood War

Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games have become an attractive domain for AI research in recent years, due to their dynamic, multi-agent and multi-objective environments. Micromanagement, a core component of many RTS games, involves the control of multiple agents to accomplish goals that require fast, real time assessment and reaction. In this paper, we present the application and evaluation of a Neuroevolution technique in evolving micromanagement agents for the RTS game Starcraft: Brood War (SC:BW). The NeuroEvolution of Augmented Topologies (NEAT) algorithm, both in its standard form and its real-time variant (rtNEAT) is comparatively evaluated in micromanagement tasks. Preliminary re- sults suggest the general viability of these techniques in comparison to traditional, non-adaptive AI. Further analysis of each algorithm identi- fied differences in task performance and learning rate.

Speaker: Associate Professor Ian Watson, Dept of Computer Science, The University of Auckland.

Ian Watson has a PhD in Computer Science from Liverpool University.  His career has involved the practical application of many area of Artificial Intelligence research, including Knowledge Engineering and Expert Systems.  His recent interests are in Case-Based Reasoning and Game AI.

For further information please email Emma Hart

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