To: bprlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bprlist] Computers learn to talk and "hunt" as a pack
From: owner-bpr@philologos.org
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 06:35:40 -0000

Tuesday, 6 February 2001

Computers learn to talk and "hunt" as a pack
By UPI Science News

http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=158061

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Feb 6 (UPI) -- Researchers at Penn State
University say their computers learned to talk to one another in a
self-developed language as they cooperated to "hunt" computerized
prey.

Experts say the innovation could have profound implications for the
future of robotics and artificial intelligence.

"I could see this having military applications or applications in the
space program," said Dr. Lee Giles, a professor of information
technology at Penn State. "I think you could see practical
applications in hostile environments in the next three to five years,
just because we will have so much computer power available to us by
then."

Giles and study co-author Kam-Chuen Jim essentially asked a group of
computer programs to play hide and seek. These self-directed programs
(called "autonomous agents" because of their ability to actively
sense and respond to external conditions) were able to "talk" to one
another via a message board.

In the course of tracking a computerized "prey," the autonomous
agents hunted as a group, developing a common language that enabled
them to work together more effectively than has any similar group in
the past.

While autonomous agents have been linked together before, they
typically have communicated through a pre-set language created by
their programmers. In this case the computers generated their own
communications protocol -- a unique language that was specific to the
task at hand.

That specificity could be the key to enhanced performance in the
field, Giles said, "because such a language would be more
representative of the environment they were in."

With their own language, he suggested, robots driven by autonomous-
agent programs could take the predator-prey scenario out of the lab
and into the real world.

Say for example a space probe went astray. "You want to find it, and
you know it is somewhere, but you don't know exactly where," said
Giles. Given sufficient time, it's possible that a team of autonomous
agents could find it.

In a military context, "you could see these predators being robots
that are trying to capture another 'prey' robot," he said. "That is
quite possible."

Giles' team has not yet partnered with any government agency or
corporation that might bring those dreams to fruition, and some
experts in the field express skepticism about the possible
applications of Giles' findings.

"This work was done in the lab, in a controlled environment, and
there is a real question as to whether that kind of thing can be
scaled up" to handle the demands of a larger or more complex system,
said Stan Franklin, a professor in the math sciences department at
the University of Memphis and author of the book "Artificial Minds."

Franklin nonetheless said the findings could bode well for the long-
term future of robotics.

"A major issue with multi-agent systems is who does what, and if they
could talk to one another in their own [situation-specific] language,
they could probably do that a little better," he said. "I can easily
imagine that there may be good applications of this work, but there
is still a ways to go."

(Reported by Adam Katz-Stone in Annapolis, Md.)

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