Giovambattista Ianni: Intelligence in Video Games – From Pacman to the Angry Birds AI Competition Experience

Abstract
This talk aims to introduce by examples the current challenges and trends of Artificial Intelligence facing the broad world of video games. After showing the remarkably simple, yet effective artificial intelligence of Pacman’s ghosts, we get back to modern times in which neural networks claim to be the hands down winners in the field. Yet, a small island has not been conquered yet: from AI-assisted level generation to Artificial Players for Angry Birds, the classic deductive AI methods have still some stroke to brush in the overall picture.

Biography

Giovambattista (GB) Ianni is Associate Professor at University of Calabria in Rende (Italy). His research interests include knowledge representation and reasoning, semantic web and coupling of hybrid systems. He recently focused his research interests on Artificial Intelligence in videogames with particular attention to the issue of complex and time-consuming reasoning in real-time contexts and automated level generation.