Four Second Life-based artificial intelligence projects won last weekend's Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge, led by the U.S. Army's Research Laboratory, a contest to develop and award virtual world-based applications of AI with real world use cases. (Here's the whole list.) While the awards were relatively small (several thousand dollars in most cases), the projects themselves were pretty impressive. Here's a look at the four SL-based winners, spanning applications as various as education, disaster preparedness, defense, and science research:
"Curiosity AI", by Shannon Bohle, is a prototype artificial intelligence that communicates R&D concepts to be used in our future exploration of Mars:
The Second Life Checkpoint Exercise was developed by USC's Institute for Creative technologies, and uses AIs to simulate Iraqis civilians for training soldiers to handle peacekeeping duties. (Click screenshot for video and more info):
Two more after the break:
Uruk: The First City by Anton Bogdanovych of the University of Western Sydney, simulates an entire ancient city for immersive education. I wrote about this project at great length here. Watch the demo video below:
Finally, the Hurricane Shelter Simulation by Andrew Boyarsky of CUNY School of Professional Studies creates a disaster simulation with AI agents acting as survivors to train EMT workers:
I hope to write more about some of these projects soon. Much thanks to FVWC winner Shannon Bohle for the tip!
Congrats to these wonderful ambassadors, informing the world of virtual's great capabilities!
Posted by: Jenn Forager | Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 03:49 PM
Thanks for this, very cool.
Posted by: Rod Humble | Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 05:13 PM
Good stuff, Hamlet.
But the other important point was that the grand prize winner of $25,000 and winner of "AI Assisted Training" division -- another $5,000 -- was a non-Second Life based project called "Clinispace."
Check out the video I posted on Betterverse.org. Very impressive web-based 3D implementation for emergency medical training.
Posted by: rikomatic | Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 08:03 PM
Clinispace was made with Unity.
Which also powers the Tipodean web-viewer.
Which also powers ReactionGrid's Jibe platform.
OMG IT'S EVERYWHERE!
Seriously, tho. Hamlet, you should interview the good folks at Unity. :)
Posted by: Pathfinder | Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 06:11 PM
FYI we'll be chatting with some of the winners of the FVWC tomorrow (april 1) at the Nonprofit Commons Meeting at 8:30am PST. Plus the organizers of the challenge might drop by!
More details on nonprofitcommons.org.
Posted by: rikomatic | Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 11:41 AM