about
Evolving simple programs for playing Atari games (arxiv.org)
3 points by henning on Oct 17, 2018 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Small programs are grown by repeatedly mutating and keeping ones that score better, reading the game screen with simple math to choose button presses. Many of these tiny players match the best Atari-playing systems while needing less training time.

Abstract

Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) has previously shown capabilities in image processing tasks by evolving programs with a function set specialized for computer vision. A similar approach can be applied to Atari playing. Programs are evolved using mixed type CGP with a function set suited for matrix operations, including image processing, but allowing for controller behavior to emerge. While the programs are relatively small, many controllers are competitive with state of the art methods for the Atari benchmark set and require less training time. By evaluating the programs of the best evolved individuals, simple but effective strategies can be found.

Dennis G Wilson, Sylvain Cussat-Blanc, Hervé Luga, Julian F Miller
arXiv:1806.05695 · cs.NE, cs.AI · submitted Jun 14, 2018
abstract · pdf · html

add comment on HN
Also discussed: Aug 2018 (2 points, 0 comments) · Jul 2018 (1 point, 0 comments) · Jul 2018 (1 point, 0 comments)