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Mutating Animations

Posted by michael on from the learning-to-fly-but-i-ain't-got-wings dept.

Weird_one writes "Discover magazine's current issue has an intriguing article involving using genetic algorithims to evolve an animation of a walking individual."

8 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by aardwolf204 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But I think I'll still have to wait like 20 years for that.

    No, you'll have to spend 20 years playing the AI over, and over, and over again before it can even begin to evolve into something worth playing.
    /Timedemo 1 Might help.

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  2. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by aardwolf204 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I saw the HL2 E3 demo and I was also amazed. Specifically the part when Gordon runs into a room after attacking an alien/zombie. Gordon barricades the door with a table and hides behind a washing machine. The alien trys to open the door with no success, then to my surprise, the alien tries the window. Now *that* is what I'm looking for in a AI/game.

    I'll hold my final opinion until the leak comes out, but it sure beats killing scientists and barny because they wont move out of the way.

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  3. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by arvindn · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'll assume that you're referring to the game adjusting to your playing style, because there are no real-time CPU constraints if you just want to evolve a generic entity. If that's the case, the more serious problem would probably be getting sufficient user input. Genetic algos usually take hundreds, sometimes thousands of generations, and since you cant wait for the user to play the game thousands of times you've got to improvise.

    In the case of board games, we've had learning algorithms for a long time now. I remember Fritz4 (chess program) having it 6-7 years ago.

  4. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by mr3038 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Download the E3 demo of Half-Life 2. In it there is a section where people are fighting alongside Gordon. This didn't look too spectacular until the presenter announced that these characters were NOT moving according to a script.

    Call me a skeptic, but I don't swallow that immediately. When Black and White was still in production there was some press that stated that the game had such a great AI that if the developers dropped a ball to the citizens, they started to play soccer by their own, assisted by the AI only. Did anybody ever see anything even remotely near that level of intelligence in the final release?

    Yes, that scene could really use AI to move all the characters but it remains to be seen if the scene is constructed specially so that AI can survive on its own or was the AI really intelligent? Don't expect too much. It's AI instead of I for a reason.

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  5. Re:Its more difficult than one thinks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    • The character's body plan involved 700 distinct parameters that needed to be optimized to teach it how to walk like a human.

      So its not like the computer learnt to walk by itself. There's a lot of hard work involved before you can even start the GA. Congrats to Reil.



    The computer did learn to walk by itself. The control of those 700 distinct parameters to move the legs is what the genetic algorithm was optimizing.


  6. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by Trinition · · Score: 3, Insightful
    But the point of the article was not that the characters learned to walk on the fly. It was that no one had to program these guys how to walk.

    So, game makers no longer have to record a real person's movements, or formulate the movements themselves. They just let generations of these things learn in a "lab" setting. Once they've got the result they want, they can then save the settigns and use it in the production game without the need to "learn on the fly". You don't have to have a fast CPU to use it in a game. This is a development tool that saves time on making a walking algortihm that will look artificial. Instead, you make a computer come up with that walking algorithm for you.

    The best part is, you could apply this strategy to models that are entirely dreamed up. Maybe a 5 legged serpent? No one knows how one of those might walk, but this technique learn how one walks.

  7. Re:These must be stopped! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Of course, this isn't an example of genetic algorithms, just stochastic hillclimbing. There's no crossover in the algorithm.

  8. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by bentcd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What they are presumably doing is give the AI objectives and then add a large number of algorithms it can choose from in order to overcome obstacles.

    Objective: escort Gordon to helipad
    Obstacle: Gordon isn't moving
    Algorithm: Hang around, look for bad guys
    Obstacle: Gordon moved out of sight
    Algorithm: Follow cheapest path to Gordon's location
    Obstacle: Enemies ahead firing at Gordon
    Algorithm: Cover him. Kill bad guys.
    Obstacle: There is no path to Gordon
    Algorithm: Find closed portals that would lead to him, open them in turn until a path is available ... etc ...

    The real difficulty here is determining which obstacle detections and algorithms to add and how to link them together (and then implementing them all). The more complex your environment, the more detections you must have and the more different types of obstacles, the more algorithms.

    If they get it right ... it'll be time to get an upgraded system I suppose ...

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