NERO: NeuroEvolving Robotic Operatives
Active from 2003 - 2009
The goal of the NERO project is to demonstrate how Artificial Intelligence can be used effectively in games. NERO is a game prototype where an AI technique called Neuroevolution is used to train simulated robotic agents to cope with changing environments and situations. The agents operate autonomously, directed by the player who acts as a trainer for his or her team. The project is a collaboration of the Digital Media Collaboratory (DMC) of the IC2 Institute and the Neural Networks Research Group at the Department of Computer Sciences (UTCS) at the University of Texas at Austin.

For more information visit the Project NERO Website

Our paper Evolving Neural Network Agents in the NERO Video Game won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE 2005 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.
People
Kenneth Stanley Postdoctoral Alumni kstanley [at] cs ucf edu
Bobby D. Bryant Ph.D. Alumni bdbryant [at] cse unr edu
Risto Miikkulainen Faculty risto [at] cs utexas edu
Aliza Gold Formerly affiliated Collaborator
Igor V. Karpov Masters Alumni ikarpov [at] gmail com
Ryan Cornelius Undergraduate Alumni
Publications
     [Expand to show all 14][Minimize]
Evaluating team behaviors constructed with human-guided machine learning 2015
Igor V. Karpov, Leif M. Johnson and Risto Miikkulainen, To Appear In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games, August 31-July 2 2015.
Evaluation Methods for Active Human-Guided Neuroevolution in Games 2012
Igor Karpov, Leif Johnson, Vinod Valsalam and Risto Miikkulainen, In 2012 AAAI Fall Symposium on Robots Learning Interactively from Human Teachers (RLIHT), November 2012.
Multiagent Learning through Neuroevolution 2012
Risto Miikkulainen, Eliana Feasley, Leif Johnson, Igor Karpov, Padmini Rajagopalan, Aditya Rawal, and Wesley Tansey, In Advances in Computational Intelligence, J. Liu et al. (Eds.), Vol. LNCS 7311, pp. 24-46, Berlin, Heidelberg: 2012. Springer.
Assisting Machine Learning Through Shaping, Advice and Examples 2011
Igor Karpov, Vinod Valsalam and Risto Miikkulainen, In 2011 IJCAI Workshop on Agents Learning Interactively from Human Teachers (ALIHT), July 2011.
Human-Assisted Neuroevolution Through Shaping, Advice and Examples 2011
Igor V. Karpov, Vinod K. Valsalam and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the 13th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2011), Dublin, Ireland, July 2011.
Computational Intelligence in Games 2006
Risto Miikkulainen, Bobby D. Bryant, Ryan Cornelius, Igor V. Karpov, Kenneth O. Stanley, and Chern Han Yong, In Computational Intelligence: Principles and Practice, Gary Y. Yen and David B. Fogel (Eds.), Piscataway, NJ 2006. IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Creating Intelligent Agents in Games 2006
Risto Miikkulainen, The Bridge (2006), pp. 5-13.
Real-Time Evolution of Neural Networks in the NERO Video Game 2006
Kenneth O. Stanley, Bobby D. Bryant, Igor Karpov, Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2006), pp. 1671--1674, Boston, MA 2006. Meno Park, CA: AAAI Press.
Academic AI and Video Games: A Case Study of Incorporating Innovative Academic Research into a Video Game Prototype 2005
Aliza Gold, In Proceedings of the IEEE 2005 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'05) 2005. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE.
Evolving Neural Network Agents in the NERO Video Game 2005
Kenneth O. Stanley, Bobby D. Bryant, and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the IEEE 2005 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'05), Piscataway, NJ 2005. IEEE.
Incorporating Advice into Evolution of Neural Networks 2005
Chern Han Yong, Kenneth O. Stanley, and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2005) 2005. Late Breaking Papers.
Real-Time Learning in the NERO Video Game 2005
Kenneth O. Stanley, Ryan Cornelius, Risto Miikkulainen, Thomas D'Silva, and Aliza Gold, In Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE 2005) Demo Papers 2005.
Real-time Neuroevolution in the NERO Video Game 2005
Kenneth O. Stanley, Bobby D. Bryant, and Risto Miikkulainen, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (2005), pp. 653-668. IEEE.
Retaining Learned Behavior During Real-Time Neuroevolution 2005
Thomas D'Silva, Roy Janik, Michael Chrien, Kenneth O. Stanley and Risto Miikkulainen, Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (2005). American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
Related Areas
Game Playing Neuroevolution
Software/Data
OpenNERO OpenNERO is a general research and education platform for artificial intelligence. The platform is based on a simulatio... 2010
rtNEAT C++ The rtNEAT package contains source code implementing the real-time NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies method. In ad... 2006
Demos
Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives (NERO)Kenneth Stanley2007
Labs
Neural Networks