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AI in the News
Lecture 7/9/2006
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.
AI.Implant
• Vivendi Games has signed a contract
(announcement July 26, 2006) licensing
AI.implant™, Engenuity’s 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.
AI.Implant
• “Engenuity understands the demands of
the next-gen games pipeline, and has
developed a product that addresses the
market’s need for more intense and
realistic in-game AI”
– Peter Della Penna, executive vice president
and chief operating officer, Worldwide
Studios, Vivendi
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.
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
– “PLAYSTATION®3” 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.
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.
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.
AI.Implant
• Military operations are increasingly urban
and individual warrior oriented in nature.
• Military Operations in Urban
Terrain(MOUT)-based Modeling
Simulation and Training (MS&T)
applications have greater demands placed
on them for realistic and accurate real-time
simulation of individual human entities
operating in complex 3D urban
environment.
Motivations
• “The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities
only when there is no alternative.” [Tzu 1982]
• In spite of Tzu’s 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 (nonaggregate) simulation i.e., individual human
based simulation / train-ing becomes a
requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
Trends
• Global Urbanization
• In 2004, the United Nations reported 48% of the world’s
population lived in urban environments.
• As of 2003 and it was projected to exceed the 50% mark
by 2007.
• Furthermore, one billion people—approximately one third
of the world’s 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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 “Ender’s Game”
– Orson Scott Card, 1985.