Evolving Aesthetic Maps for a Real Time Strategy Game

Artículo publicado en congreso SEED'2013 (I Spanish Symposium on Entertainment Computing), Septiembre 2013, Madrid.This paper presents a procedural content generator method that have been able to generate aesthetic maps for a real-time strategy game. The maps has been characterized based on several of their properties in order to de ne a similarity function between scenarios. This function has guided a multi-objective evolution strategy during the process of generating and evolving scenarios that are similar to other aesthetic maps while being di erent to a set of non-aesthetic scenarios. The solutions have been checked using a support-vector machine classi er and a self-organizing map obtaining successful results (generated maps have been classi ed as aesthetic maps)

PWM Control of a Buck Converter with an Amorphous Core Coil

Pulse-width modulation is widely used to control electronic converters. One of the most topologies used for high DC voltage/low DC voltage conversion is the Buck converter. It is obtained as a second order system with a LC filter between the switching subsystem and the load. The use of a coil with an amorphous magnetic material core instead of air core lets design converters with smaller size. If high switching frequencies are used for obtaining high quality voltage output, the value of the auto inductance L is reduced throughout the time. Then, robust controllers are needed if the accuracy of the converter response must not be affected by auto inductance and load variations. This paper presents a robust controller for a Buck converter based on a state space feedback control system combined with an additional virtual space variable which minimizes the effects of the inductance and load variations when a not-toohigh switching frequency is applied. The system exhibits a null steady-state average error response for the entire range of parameter variations. Simulation results are presented

Using the Own Flexibility of a Climbing Robot as a Double Force Sensor

Force sensors are used when interaction tasks are carried out by robots in general, and by climbing robots in particular. If the mechanics and electronics systems are contained inside the own robot, the robot becomes portable without external control. Commercial force sensors cannot be used due to limited space and weight. By selecting the links material with appropriate stiffness and placing strain gauges on the structure, the own robot flexibility can be used such as force sensor. Thus, forces applied on the robot tip can be measured without additional external devices. Only gauges and small internal electronic converters are necessary. This paper illustrates the proposed algorithm to achieve these measurements. Additionally, experimental results are presented

Hardware/software codesign methodology for fuzzy controller implementation

This paper describes a HW/SW codesign methodology for the implementation of fuzzy controllers on a platform composed by a general-purpose microcontroller and specific processing elements implemented on FPGAs or ASICs. The different phases of the methodology, as well as the CAD tools used in each design stage, are presented, with emphasis on the fuzzy system development environment Xfuzzy. Also included is a practical application of the described methodology for the development of a fuzzy controller for a dosage system

A Self-Adaptive Evolutionary Approach to the Evolution of Aesthetic Maps for a RTS Game

Procedural content generation (PCG) is a research eld on the rise,with numerous papers devoted to this topic. This paper presents a PCG method based on a self-adaptive evolution strategy for the automatic generation of maps for the real-time strategy (RTS) game PlanetWars. These maps are generated in order to ful ll the aesthetic preferences of the user, as implied by her assessment of a collection of maps used as training set. A topological approach is used for the characterization of the maps and their subsequent evaluation: the sphere-of-in uence graph (SIG) of each map is built, several graph-theoretic measures are computed on it, and a feature selection method is utilized to determine adequate subsets of measures to capture the class of the map. A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is subsequently employed to evolve maps, using these feature sets in order to measure distance to good (aesthetic) and bad (non-aesthetic) maps in the training set. The so-obtained results are visually analyzed and compared to the target maps using a Kohonen network.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Metodología para la enseñanza de la geometría del espacio con empleo de medios tecnológicos

La enseñanza de la geometría ha ocupado a muchos investigadores, tanto nacional como internacionalmente, los estudios se centran particularmente en los enfoques del tratamiento de los contenidos geométricos espaciales. La investigación se dirige al perfeccionamiento del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la geometría del espacio. El objetivo es elaborar una metodología que permita el uso adecuado de los medios tecnológicos en este proceso, con el fin de favorecer una aproximación flexible, sistémica e integral y la participación activa de los estudiantes durante su desarrollo, sustentado en el papel dinamizador de los medios tecnológicos. Valorada por especialistas, la propuesta resulta novedosa y pertinente para el contexto educativo. El uso de las tecnologías en la geometría del espacio contribuye al perfeccionamiento del proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje, desde el desarrollo de la capacidad de visualización y ubicación espacial de los estudiantes, así como a la dinamización de los componentes concebidos desde una mirada innovadora

COMalaWEB: plataforma basada en noves tecnologies aplicades a la docència

Les possibilitats que ens ofereixen les noves tecnologies de la informació aplicades a l’àmbit de la docència és un tema encara no prou ben explotat. Aquest projecte pretén investigar aquests conceptes mitjançant la creació d’una plataforma docent que aprofita la potencialitat de tecnologies tals com les bases de dades, l’estructuració de documents en XML, l’hipertext o la representació gràfica interactiva. A més, aquesta estructura s’ha farcit amb continguts docents de qualitat que cobreixen el temari de dues assignatures obligatòries al programa d’Enginyeria Superior de Telecomunicacions de la UPC. El procés d’aprenentatge es basa en la integració de petits conceptes sobre una base ja coneguda. La rigidesa d’un temari fix, o l’índex d’un llibre, forcen un seguiment lineal dels conceptes que sovint no és l’òptim ni per al professor ni per a l’alumne. COMalaWEB permet la consulta de diferents conceptes de forma no lineal, on l’usuari decideix quin nivell d’aprofundiment necessita, si vol més exemples, retornar a conceptes anteriors o anar a temes més avançats. Aquestes capacitats es complementen amb aplicacions d’autoavaluació i demostracions gràfiques interactives que reforcen la realimentació entre teoria i pràctica. La totalitat del programari desenvolupat per a la implementació d’aquesta plataforma i els continguts docents que presenta han estat publicats sota llicència pública per assegurar-ne la lliure distribució i accés, així com la protecció dels drets intel•lectuals

Procedural Content Generation for Real-Time Strategy Games

Videogames are one of the most important and profitable sectors in the industry of entertainment. Nowadays, the creation of a videogame is often a large-scale endeavor and bears many similarities with, e.g., movie production. On the central tasks in the development of a videogame is content generation, namely the definition of maps, terrains, non-player characters (NPCs) and other graphical, musical and AI-related components of the game. Such generation is costly due to its complexity, the great amount of work required and the need of specialized manpower. Hence the relevance of optimizing the process and alleviating costs. In this sense, procedural content generation (PCG) comes in handy as a means of reducing costs by using algorithmic techniques to automatically generate some game contents. PCG also provides advantages in terms of player experience since the contents generated are typically not fixed but can vary in different playing sessions, and can even adapt to the player herself. For this purpose, the underlying algorithmic technique used for PCG must be also flexible and adaptable. This is the case of computational intelligence in general and evolutionary algorithms in particular. In this work we shall provide an overview of the use of evolutionary intelligence for PCG, with special emphasis on its use within the context of real-time strategy games. We shall show how these techniques can address both playability and aesthetics, as well as improving the game AI

Game Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for the Scientific Community

This paper discusses some of the most interesting challenges to which the games research community members may face in the área of the application of arti cial or computational intelligence techniques to the design and creation of video games. The paper focuses on three lines that certainly will in uence signi cantly the industry of game development in the near future, speci cally on the automatic generation of content, the a ective computing applied to video games and the generation of behaviors that manage the decisions of entities not controlled by the human player.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Optimización en videojuegos: retos para la comunidad cientí­fica

Este artículo analiza algunos de los desafíos más interesantes a los cuales los miembros de la comunidad MAEB pueden enfrentarse en el área de la aplicación de técnicas de Inteligencia Artificial/Computacional al diseño y creación de videojuegos. El artículo se centra en tres líneas, que en un futuro cercano, seguramente van a influenciar de forma significativa la industria del desarrollo de videojuegos, en concreto se enfoca en la Generación Automática de Contenido, en la Computación Afectiva aplicada a los videojuegos y en la Generación de Comportamientos que gestionen la toma de decisiones de las entidades no controladas por el jugador humano.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Este trabajo está parcialmente financiado por la Junta de Andalucía dentro del proyecto P10-TIC-6083 (DNEMESIS), por el MICINN dentro del proyecto TIN2011-28627-C04-01 (ANYSELF