AI in the News

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AI in the News

• Lecture 7/9/2006

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AI.Implant

• Engenuity Technologies Inc.
• Global player in visualization and simulation
  software solutions for the aerospace, defense,
  automotive, games and entertainment markets.
• Provides artificial intelligence tools and
  middleware for games, animation and simulation
• Products and services are currently used by more
  than 800 customers in 40 countries.

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AI.Implant

• Vivendi Games has signed a contract (announcement
  July 26, 2006) licensing AI.implant, Engenuitys
  next-generation artificial intelligence (AI)
  solution.
• Vivendi Games, a global developer, publisher and
  distributor of multi-platform interactive
  entertainment, has selected AI.implant as the
  preferred artificial intelligence solution across
  all of their studios.

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AI.Implant

• Engenuity understands the demands of the
  next-gen games pipeline, and has developed a
  product that addresses the markets need for more
  intense and realistic in-game AI
• Peter Della Penna, executive vice president and
  chief operating officer, Worldwide Studios,
  Vivendi

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AI.Implant

• U.S.-based High Moon Studios, developer of the
  critically acclaimed Darkwatch, is the first
  Sierra Entertainment studio to standardize on
  AI.implant.
• High Moon Studios has been up and running on
  AI.implant since the evaluation process began in
  February 2006.

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AI.Implant

• AI.implant provides an intuitive authoring
  environment that allows developers to create
  variable and complex artificial intelligence
  behaviors across all major next-generation game
  platforms
• PLAYSTATION3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.
• AI.implant provides seamless integration with the
  Unreal 3 game engine from Epic enabling many
  developers and designers to work with a familiar
  platform.

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AI.Implant

• Started life as BGT Biographic Technologies
• Software's original target markets was movies,
  allowing filmmakers the ability to create virtual
  extras.
• Engenuity purchased BGT for 1.7 Million.
• Purchase was motivated by several clients "who
  clearly told us that they would like to see more
  intelligence in the tools."
• BGT did that, giving simulation engineers using
  the tools easy access to artificial intelligence.

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AI.Implant

• BGT was a small company
• had more good ideas than the capacity to get out
  to the marketplace. Everyone was wearing a
  million hats.
• Engenuity provided engineering and corporate
  capabilities that allowed them to catch up to the
  ideas.
• Provided more marketing and better customer
  support."
• BGT had six employees. Engenuity has 92.
• The sale also allowed BGT to escape some 1.5
  million in debts which Engenuity assumed.

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AI.Implant

• Military operations are increasingly urban and
  individual warrior oriented in nature.
• Military Operations in Urban Terrain(MOUT)-based
  Modeling Simulation and Training (MST)
  applications have greater demands placed on them
  for realistic and accurate real-time simulation
  of individual human entities operating in complex
  3D urban environment.

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Motivations

• The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack
  cities only when there is no alternative. Tzu
  1982
• In spite of Tzus famous warning, increased
  urbanization has given modern armies little
  choice.
• The only thing that they can choose is how they
  prepare for it.
• As fighting becomes more urban and thus more
  indi-vidual, the need for high-fidelity
  (non-aggregate) simulation i.e., individual human
  based simulation / train-ing becomes a
  requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

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Trends

• Global Urbanization
• In 2004, the United Nations reported 48 of the
  worlds population lived in urban environments.
• As of 2003 and it was projected to exceed the 50
  mark by 2007.
• Furthermore, one billion peopleapproximately one
  third of the worlds urban dwellers, live in
  slums.
• It predicted that within 30 years that figure
  would have doubled to two billion.
• It is straightforward to see why the future holds
  more urban warfare not less.

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Trends

• Assymetric Warefare
• Although battles between regular (e.g.,
  structured armies) and irregular (e.g., armed
  militia) forces have been fought since beginning
  of history of warfare, up until recently they
  were small brief skirmishes on the side of larger
  formalized conflicts rather than ends in
  themselves.
• However, The Battle of the Black Sea (Mogadishu,
  Somalia) in 1993 marked a significant turning
  point in combat for American forces in that every
  significant subsequent battle (excepting Iraqi
  Freedom) has been against irregular forces such
  as militiamen and terrorists.
• There is no reason why this will decrease and
  only daily reasons reported in the media why this
  trend will increase.

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Trends

• Individual Fighting
• Irregular forces operating in urban environments
  will naturally do everything
• to minimize their opponents technical superiority
  
• E.g., avoiding organized direct confrontation
• to maximize their own advantages
• E.g., being able blend into the surrounding
  civilian population.
• This translates into battles that are small,
  individual and fierce.

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Trends

• MOUT
• All conflicts within the last 15 years involving
  western forces have been urban in nature (e.g.,
  Mogadishu, Bosnia, and Iraq)
• Nonetheless, real-time crowd simulation in
  complex urban terrain has been neglected for a
  multitude of reasons
• Up until recently the hardware simply was not
  powerful enough.
• The military moves very slowly to acknowledge
  change so they have not emphasized it as a need.
  
• Application developers have avoided human
  simulation as it is much more difficult than
  machine simulation.

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Trends

• Entertainment technology as an innovative force.
• As films like The Lord of the Rings and video
  games such as Half-Life demonstrate, the driving
  force behind computer graphics in general and
  digital humans in particular is coming from the
  entertainment industries and in particular the
  special effects (SFX) and video game communities.

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Potential Roles of AI

• Simulate the people (not only the ground forces
  but also the drivers of vehicles) in
• the battle
• the combatants (blue and red forces)
• the civilians (green forces).
• These are often called Computer Generated Forces
  (CGFs) or Semi-Automated Forces (SAFs).
• Examples of the types of entities that can be
  simulated are
• Navigation for vehicles (e.g., drivers).
• Individual doctrinal combatants.
• Individual irregular combatants.
• Crowds of individual non-combatants (clutter).

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Potential Roles of AI

• Vehicle Drivers and Pilots
• Vehicles have very complex models for
• physics
• helicopters will wobble realistically as they
  bank into turns and tanks will bounce as they
  jump ditches
• weapon / communication systems
• line of sight radios will not work through hills
• But they tend to have simplistic line of sight
  navigation systems that fail in the 3D concrete
  canyons of MOUT
• helicopters fly straight through skyscrapers
  rather than around them
• tanks get confused and stuck in the twisty
  garbage filled streets of the third world.
• AI can be used to simulate of the brain of the
  human driver in the vehicle (with or without the
  actual body being simulated).

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Potential Roles of AI

• Crowds of individual non-combatants.
• One of the most difficult restrictions of MOUT is
  how to conduct military operations in an
  environment that populated with non-combatants.
• These large civilian populations can affect a
  mission by acting as only operational clutter
  to actually affecting the outcome of the battle.

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Potential Applications

• The individual-life CGFs are be used in
• individual warrior trainers
• vehicle (ground and air) simulators
• battle simulators
• JOIN THE ARMY AND PLAY GAMES?
• PLAY GAMES AND JOIN THE ARMY?
• Remember Enders Game
• Orson Scott Card, 1985.