Author Topic: Bot Challenges: A New Direction  (Read 15232 times)

Offline Elite

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Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« on: September 24, 2007, 01:41:03 PM »
I've come to percieve a certain flaw in the way we program bots at the moment: bot behavior is generally too simple. Most bots' behavior comes straight from a series of if ... then triggers, directly from the dna; bots ignore others of their own species, and spend all their time eating (or searching for something to eat) and replicating. We're programing more and more efficient grey goo.

The purpose of these new challenges is to encourage the development of more interesting, interactive and intelligent bot behavior. The new challenges are more informal too and less competitive, with much looser rules and goals. Discussion and sharing of ideas is also encouraged.

This will also have consequences for the DB environment. Terrirorial bots will diversify the field; bots that can learn can utilise nontrivial strategies; bots with behavior controled by meta-systems (ie. non-genetically-deterministic behavior) might evolve in different ways ...

The first of the new challenges is to program a bot with a very basic artificial neural net to govern behavior. To attempt this you need to know a bit about neural networks, so it's a pretty high target. Massive kudos to whoever attempts this.

Offline SlyStalker

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2013, 01:48:43 AM »
i agree, elite, but its going to be a very high mountain to climb judging from the way we are programming at the moment... but over time, im sure we will rise to the challenge  :)
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2013, 12:59:46 PM »
I'm making a bot that has the strict rules of the if then triggers but generationaly adapts to the environment without mutations. In fact it would degrade over time with it. It over time decides what to use and has the ability to change to adapt to almost any opponent. Although i only have a small part done :( but this is the next step to a neural net type bot.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2013, 02:14:07 PM »
Quote
In fact it would degrade over time with it.

I don't really buy that, any bot can benefit from mutations under certain circumstances.
But, good luck with your first big bot project  :)

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2013, 08:30:37 PM »
this bot has the ability to use everything from all sinces and any mutation would shatter the uses of them and i made a bot that i used as a base and over night it had almost no mutations and some had none. the only mutations it had were ones that had no effect to the other genes like insertions at the end or middle of genes. i was sad that so little had took place, but it did what it was suppose to do. :)

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2013, 09:18:59 AM »
Should be an interesting bot;

One good way to see if mutations improve a bot (now this really does not work all the time)

a.) Make to copys of your robot, lets call one bfb and the other mfb (that is the names I use in my runs)

b.) Start a new simulation with both robots and some vegys. Make sure to set mfb to reasonably high mutations and make sure to completely disable mutations for bfb.

At some point you should see the mutating robot (mfb) kill off the non mutating robot.

(I have some tricks to make this process work consistently, I just did not implement them yet)

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2013, 03:27:22 PM »
my first neural bot is done and is very interesting 8)

still waiting on a good useful bot though

dbv 2.46

you may have to disable each individual mutation though because of mrepro

enjoy and if you wish to modify it making it better i'd love to see
« Last Edit: October 17, 2013, 03:41:35 PM by Shadowgod2 »

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2013, 11:25:23 AM »
Does the NN estimate itself over the robots life time?

Also, is the robot passing its NN settings to the child?



Another thing that will help is to add some basic self awareness rules.
For example: Children are naturally afraid of heights or afraid of the dark.

Our neural networks build around the hard underling rules we emotionally inherit from early childhood. Fear is one possible emotion you may work with.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2013, 12:14:49 PM by Botsareus »

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2013, 02:08:40 PM »
currently i've got the NNet mutations in place but i can't figure out how to pass the parent NNet to the child properly. i'm wanting to do ties to pass information through. it's becoming a mess so i'm trying to improve it the best i can and enable it to have more mobility so it can do more than one thing at once. what i have so far is in the attachment if you want to help.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2013, 10:38:45 PM by Shadowgod2 »

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #9 on: October 20, 2013, 12:25:33 AM »
small update

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #10 on: October 28, 2013, 09:49:08 PM »
working on an explanation of what i want in the .txt should have it by tomorrow

i haven't worked on it in a while


EDIT: never mind, it took a lot less time then i thought

the explained bot is in the attachment and any work done on it please post so i can see and thank you if you do :)

EDIT: all bots with .x (now 1.5) are not complete usable bots they are only to be worked on and not ran in sims yet if anyone else is wandering
« Last Edit: October 29, 2013, 12:27:05 AM by Shadowgod2 »

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2013, 12:40:12 AM »
i've condensed the NNet bot to only use radical mem and limited it's ability however it is working perfectly. :D

EDIT:ok i've just found a problem and it's not with the bot code it's skipping memlocs and shouldn't be.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2013, 01:38:55 AM by Shadowgod2 »

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #12 on: December 02, 2013, 11:48:46 PM »
i fixed the issue the bot dna works fine now (- radical mem at gen 2 for me).

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #13 on: December 03, 2013, 10:20:37 AM »
I have not forgotten about you Shadowgod2, I just can't work on this stuff Mondays and Thursdays.
I am making some good progress fixing the rest of epigenetic memory.
I should have a drop for you today.

Sorry for the wait.

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Bot Challenges: A New Direction
« Reply #14 on: December 03, 2013, 12:20:46 PM »
actually i think that was fast thank you :D