Now *that* is AI: Norns trained as Eurofighter pilots in the RAF
Udo Schwedt
The following article was published in the current issue of the German
Spiegel magazine; I thought that might be interesting for somebody...
The original article can be found at
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/wissenschaft/23192.html
Udo
This is just a short quick'n'dirty translation (please excuse my poor
English) for the non-Germans out there:
[begin of translation]
[Title]Tens of thousands crashed
[Subtitle]Since two years little docile furry creatures charm computer
players all around the world. The "Norns" eat honey, play with balls
and pass down their genes. Now the British Royal Air Force recruited
them - they are supposed to learn how to fly fighter jets.
Near London some scientists breed the fighter pilots of the future.
Their goal: a perfect breed of pilots, for which living in the air is
as inborn and familiar as for birds. This project was initiated by the
British Army.
The breeding methods are brutal: the scientists catapult unsuspecting
recruits into the sky and watch them crashing down. The ones who
stayed in the air for the longest time are picked up again. Then the
scientists use their genes to breed the next generation in the
laboratory.
If these recruits were men, this natural selection would likely take
about a few hundreds of thousands of years to produce the first
generation of pilots who are able to survive the first minutes in the
air. But the secret pilots are computer generated: little chirping
furry creatures with big eyes, which don't actually look too martial.
They don't originate from the super laboratories of the army, but from
a popular computer game named "Creatures", which is available for
about $20 in every computer gaming store.
[...]
Programer Stephen Grand developed the game for the little company
Cyberlife in Cambridge (GB). It hit the marker end 1996. It sold half
a million times since then.
One of these games made its way into the military research institute
Dera near Bedford. The scientists were enchanted right away. Creatures
that learned on their own how to fight Grendels (rem.: Norn's enemies)
were supposed to have some success in the RAF.
The first thought of the military was to improve the pilot training at
the flight simulator. Up to now the pilots fought against computer
controlled opponents which flew their maneouvers strictly as
programmed - they were easy to defeat after some time due to their
predictability. The trainers hoped that the docile creatures were
enemies with completely different characteristics.
So the Cyberlife programmers went to work. They connected their
digital creatures with the military flight simulator, flew the virtual
plane to a few thousand feet and let the Norns take control. The first
test series ended in the expected desaster. Tens of thousands of the
little furry pets crashed into the ground. The merciless trainers took
the ones who stayed airborne for the longest time and used their genes
to breed a new fighter squadron.
Now the pilots of the 400th generation fly like hell. They fly wild
maneouvers, pursuit their enemies and shake off even the most
persistent pursuers. They only still have to learn starting and
landing.
The simulator they train upon is the very same which is used to train
the RAF pilots for the Eurofighter. "This is as realistic as it gets"
says Simon Willcox, who is responsible for the pilot breeding at
Cyberlife. All instrument data, from altimeter to radar, are
transmitted to the Norns. And they use the controls as if they
absolved a first class pilot training.
But nobody actually told them what to do. The software evolutionarily
improved by the continuous selection; the pilots benefit from their
fallen ancestor's genes. Now their genetical adaption to life in the
air is so good that they are actually able to plan and execute
tactical maneouvers with their tiny "brains".
The brain of a Norn is a quite primitive model, but it's principle
isn't different to the function of a real lifeform's brain: it
contains about thousand (digital) neurons which are connected in ever
different ways. Some of these neurons are responsible to detect
external stimuli, others save new objects and compare them with known
ones, and others computes the situation and decides what to do.
The artificial brain learns by trying new neuron connections, which
are reinforced lateron or fade away, depending on whether the Norn
escaped the enemy with a maneouver or not, or whether he ate a carot
or a poisonous mushroom.
[...]
Cyberlife's main principle was to replicate natural funtions in a
simple, but comprehensive way. "Nature has 3.7 billion years of
research time ahead of us" says Toby Simpson. "We'd be stupid to try
and construct something really new".
[...]
Because of the fact that each creature is programmed as an individual
entity which interacts with its environment, it's impossible to
predict their evolution. "I almost fell off my chair when I first saw
two of my Norns throwing a ball to each other" says Stephen Grand, the
inventor of the game. This behaviour wasn't programmed into the game;
the creatures accidentally found a way to please their urge for motion
without always having to run after the ball that rolled away.
[...]
The evolution of the jet-piloting Norns started with some strange
characteristics. The first of the not-so-quick-crashing pilots simply
continually rolled their planes like a twisting projectile. Simon
Willcox, project leader of the Norn pilots project, first doubted
about their little intelligence. But lateron he figured that their
digital nature simply found a very old method to stabilize a
trajectory.
Today the flying techniques of the Norns are so sophisticated that
it's near impossible to find out were the new abilities is stored in
the software.
[...]
In a few weeks the Norns are going to fight against real RAF pilots in
the simulator for the first time. If they prove to be as good as they
seem to be, they will very likely make their way.
"We hope that one day they will be able to fly real planes" says Simon
Hancock, computer specialist at Dera. "That would have many
advantages. No cockpit would be required, and we could build smaller
and nimbler planes, as the artificial pilots bear every acceleration."
[...]
[end of translation]
--
"Ceterum censeo Redmondem esse delendam."
Udo Schwedt (Saarstr. 2a, 52062 Aachen, Germany)
!!! NOTE: SPAM-proof header adress !!!
To reply via eMail please replace "noSPAM" by "udo".
Tony
Interesting article. Its asame game companies don't use this idea for AI.
Thanks for the translation
Mark Pruzina
Also appears in article in New Scientist 9th May
Udo Schwedt <noS...@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote in article
<35783234...@news.rwth-aachen.de>...
Guillaume MATHE (IIA-99)
Tony wrote:
>
> Interesting article. Its asame game companies don't use this idea for AI.
>
> Thanks for the translation
I'm currently ending my Artificial Intelligence training courses. I'll
get my diploma next year, and I'm really interested by programming games
(yeah, including flight-sims ;-)). I'm not alone in this way, so we CAN
expect more AI in games, within the next few years.
Ah thanks for the article & the translation. Hope DiD will take that
into account for their next sim ;)
CU,
--
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