UTeach Presentation

By Jacob Schrum

Who Am I?

Jacob Schrum Born in Honolulu, Hawaii Undergraduate at Southwestern University PhD Student at University of Texas

How Did I Spend My Time Growing Up?

Legos

Videogames

School

Learn Computer Programming– Taught myself C/C++ in high school– Classes in web programming– Internships/Competitions

Goal: Work on videogames?– Downloaded game design tools– Taught myself what I could

College: Undergraduate

Formal Programming Experience– Put the “Science” in “Computer Science”– Learned about Data Structures, Algorithms, and

Artificial Intelligence

Independent Studies– Lego Robot– Research, Honors Thesis– Evolutionary Computation

College: PhD Student

Current Research: Games and Evolution– Evolutionary Computation to get Intelligent Agents

What Is Evolution?

Evolution: change in inherited characteristics of populations over successive generations

Children Grandchildren

What Is Evolution?

Natural Selection: favorable traits become more common in populations when they increase reproductive success

Children Grandchildren

Examples

Peppered Moth

Galapagos Finches

IndustrialRevolution

Environmental Protection

Laws

Various types of beaks adapted to the types of food available:

seeds of various sizes, insects, etc.

Evolution in a Computer

Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives (NERO)– User changes “fitness function” to determine who

reproduces– Robot soldiers can

evolve to do numerous tasks

– [DEMO]– http://nerogame.org/

Evolution in a Computer

Consider Ms. Pac-Man– Make some programs that play Ms. Pac-Man– Have each play the game and save the score– Remove half of programs with lowest scores– Replace with slightly modified copies of better half– Repeat

[DEMO]

Other Creative Uses of Evolution

Galactic Arms Race– [Online Demo]

BotPrize

Can you program a bot that looks like a human?

Bot exploring level: antalus-jumpy-retrace-01.mpg

BotPrize Quizzes: http://botprize.org/quiz.html

Auxiliary Slides

What Is Evolution?

Evolution: change in inherited characteristics of populations over successive generations

Natural Selection: favorable traits become more common in populations when they increase reproductive success– Populations produce more offspring than can survive– Individuals vary, affecting survival and reproduction– Traits are heritable