AI Researchers Produce New Kind of PC Game

Ken Stanley writes "In an unusual demonstration of video game innovation with limited funding and resources, a mostly volunteer team of over 30 student programmers, artists, and researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has produced a new game genre in which the player interacively trains robotic soldiers for combat. Unlike most games today that use scripting for the AI, non-player-characters in NERO learn new tactics in real-time using advanced machine learning techniques. Perhaps projects such as this one will encourage the video game industry to begin to seek alternatives to simple scripted AI."