The 2009 Simulated Car Racing Championship. Daniele Loiacono, Julian Togelius, and Pier Luca Lanzi

Transcription

1 The 2009 Simulated Car Racing Championship Daniele Loiacono, Julian Togelius, and Pier Luca Lanzi

2 2009 Simulate Car Racing Championship The goal is to submit a learned or developed controller for TORCS, an open source racing simulator, that is able to drive fast alone and in presence of opponents Championship involves 9 races and will be run during 3 Conferences IEEE CEC-2009, Trondheim (Norway), May 18th May 21st ACM GECCO-2009, Montreal (Canada), July 8th 12th IEEE CIG-2009, Milan (Italy), September 7th 11 th Winners awarded on the basis of their scoring in each conference competition. At the end, the team with highest overall score will be the winner the championship

3 Motivations

4 Motivations Simulated Car Racing is a funny and exciting competition It is possible to see and play with the entries of this competition It looks really attractive to students and people outside the field

5 Goals of Simulated Car Racing Proposing a challenging competition: not designed with Computational Intelligence in mind computationally expensive noisy and not completely deterministic more similar to a real-world problem Proposing a relevant game-based competition: more representative of commercial games AI real-time dealing with a lot of practical issues a lot of programmed AI available for comparison human players can interact with AI

6 The Open Racing Car Simulator

7 The Open Racing Car Simulator TORCS is a state of the art open source simulator written in C++ Main features Sophisticated dynamics Provided with several cars, tracks, and controllers Active community of users and developers Easy to develop your own controller OS Support Linux: binaries and building from sources Windows: binaries and limited bulding from sources support OSX: legacy binaries and no building from sources support

8 Competition API To make TORCS more easy to use we developed an API based on socket (UDP) Values of sensors and effectors are sent through UDP 3 components Torcs Patch Server Bot (C++) Client API (C++ and Java) TORCS Patch Server BOT UDP Client Controlller

9 Sensors Rangefinders for edges of the track opponents Speed, RPM, fuel, damage, angle with track, distance race, position on track, etc.

10 Effectors Basically 4 effectors Steering wheel [-1,+1] Gas pedal [0, +1] Brake pedal [0,+1] Gearbox {-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6}

11 Submissions

12 Entries submitted CEC-2009 Luigi Cardamone, Politecnico di Milano (champ CIG-2008) Diego Pérez & Yago Sáez, University Carlos III, Madrid Jan Quadflieg, TU Dortmund Thies Lönneker & Martin V. Butz, University of Würzburg Enrique Onieva & David A. Pelta., Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas & Universidad de Granada Chung Cheng Chiu, Academia Sinica GECCO-2009 Jorge Muñoz, University Carlos III, Madrid Bernardi, Ciambelli, Fiocchetti, Manfucci and Pizzo, University of Perugia Wong Ka Chun, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Witold Szymaniak, Poznan University of Technology CIG-2009 Marc Ebner and Thorsten Tiede, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen Wolf-Dieter Beelitz, BHR Engineering Ltd., Pforzheim

13 Types of entries Mainly evolved/learned Luigi Cardamone, Politecnico di Milano (champ CIG-2008) Bernardi, Ciambelli, Fiocchetti, Manfucci and Pizzo, University of Perugia Witold Szymaniak, Poznan University of Technology Marc Ebner and Thorsten Tiede, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen Programmed behaviors developed with a significant CI contribute Thies Lönneker & Martin V. Butz, University of Würzburg Jan Quadflieg, TU Dortmund Diego Pérez & Yago Sáez, University Carlos III, Madrid Mainly programmed Enrique Onieva & David A. Pelta., Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas & Universidad de Granada Wolf-Dieter Beelitz, BHR Engineering Ltd., Pforzheim Chung Cheng Chiu, Academia Sinica Jorge Muñoz, University Carlos III, Madrid C. Guse and D. Vrajitorum, Indiana University South Ben Wong Ka Chun, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

14 Championship standings Competitor CEC-2009 GECCO-2009 CIG-2009 Total Onieva&Pelta 22 32? 54 COBOSTAR ? 45 Luigi (Champ2008) 20 23? 43 Perez&Saez 16 11? 27 Mr. Racer 19 0? 19 Redjava 14 0? 14 Epic 0 13? 13 Simplicity ? 12.5 DRT 0 11? 11 Jorge Muñoz 0 8.5? 8.5 Witold 0 0? 0

15 First evaluation stage

16 Scoring process: first stage Scoring process involves three tracks (unknown to the competitors): Buzzard-Raceway Forza Migrants Only a controller at once is tested and performance is defined as the distance covered within game tics

17 First Stage: Buzzard-Raceway DRT Witek Witold Epic Perez&Saez Ebner&Tiede Simplicity Luigi (Champ2008) Wolf-Dieter Redjava Jorge Fuentes COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta Mr. Racer

18 First Stage: Forza DRT Witek Witold Epic Perez&Saez Ebner&Tiede Simplicity Luigi (Champ2008) Wolf-Dieter Redjava Jorge Fuentes COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta Mr. Racer

19 First Stage: Migrants DRT Witek Witold Epic Perez&Saez Ebner&Tiede Simplicity Luigi (Champ2008) Wolf-Dieter Redjava Jorge Fuentes COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta Mr. Racer

20 First stage: summary Rank Competitor Forza Buzzard Migrants Total 1 COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta Jorge Muñoz Mr. Racer Wolf-Dieter Redjava Luigi (Champ2008) Perez&Saez Ebner&Tiede Simplicity Witek Witold COBOSTAR and Onieve&Pelta Clearly the fastest controllers but also the most reliable In each track the performances of best controllers are very close COBOSTAR outperfoms Berniw (one of the best programmed controller provided with TORCS) on two tracks

21 Diego Pérez et al. 8 th University Carlos III, Madrid

22 CIG-2008 Champ Luigi Cardamone Politecnico di Milano 7 th

23 Redjava 6 th Chung Cheng Chiu Academia Sinica, Taipei

24 5 th Wolf-Dieter Beelitz, BHR Engineering Ltd., Pforzheim

25 Mr Racer 4 th Jan Quadflieg TU Dortmund

26 Jorge Muñoz University Carlos III, Madrid 3 rd

27 Enrique Onieva Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, La Poveda-Arganda del Rey, Madrid David A. Pelta Universidad de Granada 2 nd

28 COBOSTAR Thies Lönneker and Martin V. Butz University of Würzburg 1 st

29 Final evaluation stage

30 The final stage Who is the best controller in presence of opponents? In the final stage we compared all the entries with the previous CIG-2008 champion For each track we run 5 races with random starting grids The final score is computed as the median of the 5 races using the F1 point system (10 to first, 8 to second, 6 to third 5, 4, 3 to the last) In addition two 2-points bonus are awarded to The controller that reported less damages at the end of the race The controller that achieved the fastest lap of the race

31 The Final Stage: Buzzard-Raceway Competitor Buzzard Forza Migrant Total COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta 9 9 Jorge Muñoz 6 6 Luigi (Champ 2008) Wolf-Dieter 4 4 Mr. Racer Perez & Saez 3 3 Redjava

32 The Final Stage: Forza Competitor Buzzard Forza Migrant Total Onieva&Pelta COBOSTAR Jorge Muñoz Mr. Racer Wolf-Dieter Luigi (champ 2008) Redjava Perez & Saez

33 The Final Stage: Migrants Competitor Buzzard Forza Migrant Total COBOSTAR Onieva&Pelta Wolf-Dieter Jorge Muñoz Luigi (champ 2008) Mr. Racer Redjava Perez & Saez COBOSTAR is the winner of CIG-2009 Car Racing Competition!

34 Championship 2009 Competitor CEC-2009 GECCO-2009 CIG-2009 Total Onieva&Pelta COBOSTAR Luigi (Champ2008) Perez&Saez Mr. Racer Redjava Onieva Jorge Muñoz & Pelta winners of 2009 Simulated 8.5 Car Racing 14.5 Championship! 23 Wolf-Dieter Epic Simplicity DRT Witold Ebner&Tiede 0 0

35 Conclusions (1) Really a lot of improvement from the first edition of TORCSbased competition at WCCI-2008 (June, 2008) WCCI-2008 CIG-2009

36 Conclusions (2) Pool of competitors is getting bigger and competition is getting more and more difficult The best controllers are at the same fast and very reliable: they are able to win even from the last position of the starting grid Many controllers improved their opponent avoidance/overtaking behavior The best controllers among the submitted ones are competitive with the programmed controllers in the game!

37 What about CI? Learn or evolve a controller from scratch does not seem to lead to the best performance The winner is actually mainly programmed However most of the controllers involves CI: Parameters optimization Learning target speed/trajectory Learning complex behaviors (?)

38 What next? We plan to organize again this competition next year keeping the championship formula We are definitely interested in performances but we also wish to see novel approaches and CI-relevant works: Introducing a training stage to encourage learning Improving sensory inputs to be competitive with professional TORCS controller Evaluating controllers also on specific tasks (e.g., race start, overtaking, etc.) as a part of the competition Simulated Car Racing requires a big effort how to keep people interested? Awards and prizes at major conferences Dissemination of results

39 Thank You! Any Question?