Just a quick post to highlight some recent media coverage about the XBox 360 being used to research heart disease. The article suggest that Simon Scarle used – you guessed it – some of the graphics hardware in the console.
Using The XBox 360 For Heart Disease Research
October 8, 2009
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games, video games | Tagged: games, heart research, Simon Scarle, video games, XBox 360 | 
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Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Learning To Play Mario Bros.
August 6, 2009Julian Togelius and Sergey Karakovskiy have organized a competition to create an agent (or AI) that plays the video game Super Mario Bros. – or, more accurately, Infinite Mario Bros. a tribute game featuring random level generation.
The advantage of using Infinite Mario Bros. is the random level generation – which can let the agent learn more generalized playing tactics rather than tactics that are tailored to a static set of levels as in Ms. Pac-Man or Pitfall.
I look forward to seeing the results of the competition, and hope to see source code published as well.
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, games, machine learning, Mario, Ms. Pac-Man, Nintendo, Pitfall, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
A Computer That Plays Pitfall
June 29, 2009From Rutgers university comes a learning algorithm that they have applied to playing the Atari 2600 game “Pitfall!”.
An example video is on YouTube.
One of the research papers is apparently here (although the site isn’t being very responsive at the moment).
I’ll get around to posting on machine learning for Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man at some point as well.
(Spotted on Kotaku and GameSetWatch.)
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, Atari 2600, games, machine learning, Pitfall, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
25 Years Of Tetris
June 14, 2009Nice to see some recognition of the 25th birthday of Tetris:
- Time Magazine: 25 Years of Tetris: From Russia With Fun
- Kotaku: Tetris Creator Wants To Turn Puzzler Into Sport
- Joystiq: Interview with Alexey Pajitnov
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Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
This Is Your Brain On Tetris
April 25, 2009We’ve all seen the findings showing that Tetris has effects upon cerebral glucose metabolic rates (GMRs). Well, the game is back in the news with more brain research…
No Comments » | brain science, games, video games | Tagged: Alexey Pajitnov, brain, brain science, games, PTSD, Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Tetris, This Is Your Brain On Videogames | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
Opening Moves
December 6, 2008[Very busy at work right now, so posts will taper off until I get to the holiday at the end of the month. That said, I do have some 20+ posts drafted. Rest assured, more content is on the way.]
Being a member of the IEEE, I regularly browse the latest issue of IEEE Spectrum. The most recent issue (December 2008) includes an article entitled “Bots Get Smart” by Jonathan Schaeffer, Vadim Bulitko, and Michael Buro. The main topic of the article is the improving of game AI in order to provide better experiences for players.
One of the parts that stood out to me was this paragraph:
No Comments » | AI, games, video games | Tagged: AI, checkers, chess, games, video games | Permalink
Posted by Karl W. Reinsch
