1. UTeach Presentation By Jacob Schrum

2. Who Am I? Jacob Schrum Born in Honolulu, Hawaii Undergraduate at Southwestern University PhD Student at University of Texas

3. How Did I Spend My Time Growing Up? Legos Videogames

4. School Learn Computer Programming – Taught myself C/C++ in high school – Classes in web programming – Internships/Competitions Goal: Work on videogames? – Downloaded game design tools – Taught myself what I could

5. College: Undergraduate Formal Programming Experience – Put the “Science” in “Computer Science” – Learned about Data Structures, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence Independent Studies – Lego Robot – Research, Honors Thesis – Evolutionary Computation

6. College: PhD Student Current Research: Games and Evolution – Evolutionary Computation to get Intelligent Agents

7. What Is Evolution? Evolution: change in inherited characteristics of populations over successive generations ChildrenGrandchildren

8. What Is Evolution? Natural Selection: favorable traits become more common in populations when they increase reproductive success ChildrenGrandchildren

9. Examples Peppered Moth Galapagos Finches Industrial Revolution Environmental Protection Laws Various types of beaks adapted to the types of food available: seeds of various sizes, insects, etc.

10. Evolution in a Computer Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives (NERO) – User changes “fitness function” to determine who reproduces – Robot soldiers can evolve to do numerous tasks – [DEMO] – http://nerogame.org/ http://nerogame.org/

11. Evolution in a Computer Consider Ms. Pac-Man – Make some programs that play Ms. Pac-Man – Have each play the game and save the score – Remove half of programs with lowest scores – Replace with slightly modified copies of better half – Repeat [DEMO]

12. Other Creative Uses of Evolution Galactic Arms Race – [Online Demo]Online Demo

13. BotPrize Can you program a bot that looks like a human? Bot exploring level: antalus-jumpy-retrace-01.mpgantalus-jumpy-retrace-01.mpg BotPrize Quizzes: http://botprize.org/quiz.htmlhttp://botprize.org/quiz.html

14. Auxiliary Slides

15. What Is Evolution? Evolution: change in inherited characteristics of populations over successive generations Natural Selection: favorable traits become more common in populations when they increase reproductive success – Populations produce more offspring than can survive – Individuals vary, affecting survival and reproduction – Traits are heritable