Taking into consideration Jorrit's latest email with regards to submitting
proposals, I have submitted my first draft and included it here. If anyone
has any further comments please let me know.
Also can anyone confirm wether it is ok for me to submit two proposals to
CS? As I have currently leaned towards the Quest/BT proposal but would
also be happy to work on the A*/Steering proposal.
Thank you to everyone for their support in this application and I hope to
start work of these topics soon.
Regards, Sam.
--------------------
About Me.
My name is Sam Devlin, I am a fifth year computer scientist student about
to be awarded a first class MEng in Computer Systems in Software
Engineering and beginning a PhD in Reinforcement Learning in October. I
have a fond interest in game AI and am looking for a project where I can
exert a continuous effort in practical AI throughout my time researching
theoretical AI.
I have no current experience working on open-source projects but am keen
to learn about this field hence my application to GSoC. I do however have
over a years industry experience working on a range of projects for BAE
System's. Development during this time was predominantly with C++ using
MSVC++.
I have also completed two internships during my undergraduate degree, one
of which was within the challenging environment of a major investment
bank. The most relevant of which, however, was within the computer science
department at the University of York, UK. During this time I worked with a
large commercial API to implement modifications, again in C++, to a
military simulator. I also gained working experience with Python in the
automation of a number of minor tasks.
I am familiar with the OpenGL API having worked with it both during a
computer graphics module of my course and in the development of a project
for BAE Systems. My experience in AI, however, is more substantial, having
focussed a large number of my module choices into this area. I have always
excelled in these subjects and as a result was selected to perform my
final year project within the AI group. This project involved the use of
reinforcement learning under partial observability to make agents play the
soccer subgame keepaway. The successful results of my research have been
submitted to the IAT'09 conference and have helped me land a DTA
scholarship for my PhD research.
With regards to other summer plans, I have one module that overlaps with
the first week of development time and so will be limited slightly by this
but will be able to then commit full time to the project throughout the
remainder of the project time. I currently have no intention to apply to
other projects within the GSoC.
Crystal Space Questions.
I first heard about Crystal Space around February this year when I began
researching projects I would like to be a part of for GSoC. Although I
have not yet contributed to the project, I have gained an understanding of
the project through lurking on the irc channel and questioning those with
experience on the AI systems available within CEL.
As previously mentioned, I am keen to begin a working relationship in the
community through the GSoC programme. I see this as a great opportunity to
become an established part of the active CS development community and
begin to work on AI systems that I want to expand, not just during GSoC
but, throughout my PhD studies.
Over the past couple of months I have successfully set up a working
environment for both CS and CEL in MSVC++. I have worked through the user
manuals of both and believe I am forming a strong understanding of the CEL
architecture within which the majority of my project work will be. Also as
required I have checked out the source code from subversion and introduced
myself on the CEL mailing list.
My Project Proposal.
Given the current complications and issues with the Quest system
(Highlighted at Quest Improvement Proposals, Quest Editor-See Bottom Of
Page and my recent discussions on the CEL mailing list.) A number of ideas
have been discussed as beneficial to the project and a refactor suggested
that removes triggers and rewards from the Quest system and makes them
standard property classes available throughout CEL.
In doing this future systems can be designed to take advantage of these
powerful tools. An example of this that I propose to implement is behavior
trees. Behavior Trees provide similar functionality to FSMs but are
considered more intuitive, and make logic more reusable. (For a more
detailed argument of Behavior Trees please see: A Behavior Tree Overview)
It has also been argued repeatedly that FSMs are becoming obsolete in
industry (For example: FSM Age is Over). If you agree or not, it is
important that CS/CEL provide tools for all developers. For those wishing
to stick with FSMs the refactored Quest system will be available, and for
those who have moved on to behavior trees the new implementation will be
available. By implementing Behavior Trees and providing detailed
documentation and tutorials it is my hope that the CEL community will
begin to explore and develop this technology that is rapidly becoming the
industry standard.
Therefore, taking into account my other commitments during the first week
of development, I have listed below my estimated deadlines for the
deliverables I propose.
1. Quest Refactor
1. Freeing the triggers & rewards from within Quest so that access to them
is available throughout CEL.
- June 7th
2. Standardise the Quest, Trigger and Reward properties so that they can
access constraints, property values and message each other (Fixing the
last three problems on https://b2cs.delcorp.org/dev/wiki/QuestEditorNG)
- June 17th
3. Allow for nesting FSMs
- June 28th
4. Example Program / Tutorial
- July 1st
2. Behavior Tree Implementation
1. Implementation
- August 1st
2. Documentation
- August 5th
3. Example Program / Tutorial
- August 10th
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