Darwin's Avatars: a Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation

The co-evolution of morphology and control for virtual crea-tures enables the creation of a novel form of gameplay and procedural content generation. Starting with a creature evolved to perform a simple task such as locomotion and removing its brain, the remaining body can be employed in a compelling interactive control problem. Just as we en-joy the challenge and reward of mastering helicopter flight or learning to play a musical instrument, learning to con-trol such a creature through manual activation of its actu-ators presents an engaging and rewarding puzzle. Impor-tantly, the novelty of this challenge is inexhaustible, since the evolution of virtual creatures provides a way to proce-durally generate content for such a game. An endless series of creatures can be evolved for a task, then have their brains removed to become the game’s next human-control chal-lenge. To demonstrate this new form of gameplay and con-tent generation, a proof-of-concept game—tentatively titled Darwin’s Avatars—was implemented using evolved creature content, and user tested. This implementation also provided a unique opportunity to compare human and evolved control of evolved virtual creatures, both qualitatively and quanti-tatively, with interesting implications for improvements and future work

Open-Ended Behavioral Complexity for Evolved Virtual Creatures

In the 19 years since Karl Sims ’ landmark publication on evolving virtual creatures [22], much of the future work he proposed has been implemented, having a significant impact on multiple fields including graphics, evolutionary computa-tion, and artificial life. There has, however been one notable exception to this progress. Despite the potential benefits, there has been no clear increase in the behavioral complexity of evolved virtual creatures (EVCs) beyond the light follow-ing demonstrated in Sims ’ original work. This paper presents an open-ended method to move be-yond this limit, making use of high-level human input in the form of a syllabus of intermediate learning tasks—along with mechanisms for preservation, reuse, and combination of previously learned tasks. This method (named ESP for its three components: encapsulation, syllabus, and pande-monium) is employed to evolve a virtual creature with be-havioral complexity that clearly exceeds previously achieved levels. ESP thus demonstrates that EVCs may indeed have the potential to one day rival the behavioral complexity— and therefore the entertainment value—of their non-virtual counterparts

Adapting Morphology to Multiple Tasks in Evolved Virtual Creatures

The ESP method for evolving virtual creatures (Lessin et al., 2013) consisted of an encapsulation mechanism to preserve learned skills, a human-designed syllabus to build higher-level skills by combining lower-level skills systematically, and a pandemonium mechanism to resolve conflicts between encapsulated skills in a single creature’s brain. Previous work with ESP showed that it is possible to evolve much more com-plex behavior than before, even when fundamental morphol-ogy (i.e., skeletal segments and joints) was evolved only for the first skill. This paper introduces a more general form of ESP in which full morphological development can continue beyond the first skill, allowing creatures to adapt their mor-phology to multiple tasks. This extension increases the vari-ety and quality of evolved creature results significantly, while maintaining the original ESP system’s ability to incremen-tally develop complex behaviors from a sequence of simpler learning tasks. In the future, this method should make it pos-sible to build EVCs with complex and believable behavior

A Novel Cross-Disciplinary Multi-Institute Approach to Translational Cancer Research: Lessons Learned from Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance Bioinformatics Consortium (PCABC)

Background The Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance Bioinformatics Consortium (PCABC, http://www.pcabc.upmc.edu ) is one of the first major project-based initiatives stemming from the Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance that was funded for four years by the Department of Health of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The objective of this was to initiate a prototype biorepository and bioinformatics infrastructure with a robust data warehouse by developing a statewide data model (1) for bioinformatics and a repository of serum and tissue samples; (2) a data model for biomarker data storage; and (3) a public access website for disseminating research results and bioinformatics tools. The members of the Consortium cooperate closely, exploring the opportunity for sharing clinical, genomic and other bioinformatics data on patient samples in oncology, for the purpose of developing collaborative research programs across cancer research institutions in Pennsylvania. The Consortium's intention was to establish a virtual repository of many clinical specimens residing in various centers across the state, in order to make them available for research. One of our primary goals was to facilitate the identification of cancer-specific biomarkers and encourage collaborative research efforts among the participating centers. Methods The PCABC has developed unique partnerships so that every region of the state can effectively contribute and participate. It includes over 80 individuals from 14 organizations, and plans to expand to partners outside the State. This has created a network of researchers, clinicians, bioinformaticians, cancer registrars, program directors, and executives from academic and community health systems, as well as external corporate partners - all working together to accomplish a common mission. The various sub-committees have developed a common IRB protocol template, common data elements for standardizing data collections for three organ sites, intellectual property/tech transfer agreements, and material transfer agreements that have been approved by each of the member institutions. This was the foundational work that has led to the development of a centralized data warehouse that has met each of the institutions’ IRB/HIPAA standards. Results Currently, this “virtual biorepository” has over 58,000 annotated samples from 11,467 cancer patients available for research purposes. The clinical annotation of tissue samples is either done manually over the internet or semi-automated batch modes through mapping of local data elements with PCABC common data elements. The database currently holds information on 7188 cases (associated with 9278 specimens and 46,666 annotated blocks and blood samples) of prostate cancer, 2736 cases (associated with 3796 specimens and 9336 annotated blocks and blood samples) of breast cancer and 1543 cases (including 1334 specimens and 2671 annotated blocks and blood samples) of melanoma. These numbers continue to grow, and plans to integrate new tumor sites are in progress. Furthermore, the group has also developed a central web-based tool that allows investigators to share their translational (genomics/proteomics) experiment data on research evaluating potential biomarkers via a central location on the Consortium's web site. Conclusions The technological achievements and the statewide informatics infrastructure that have been established by the Consortium will enable robust and efficient studies of biomarkers and their relevance to the clinical course of cancer. </jats:sec