Unity has launched the ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players

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Unity has announced a video game challenge, the Obstacle tower challenge which will test the vision, control, planning, and generalization capabilities of AI software. The Obstacle Tower Challenge will use a game-like environment of platform-style gameplay with puzzles and planning problems inside a tower setting maneuvering almost 100 floors. The challenge will examine how an AI software performs in computer vision, locomotion skills, and high-level planning.

The challenge will begin on Monday, February 11 and will run through Friday, May 24. As the challenge opens, participants can review all the rules and regulations, download the Starter Kit and begin training their agents. Round 1, which will run from February 11 to March 31, will have participants playing up to Floor 25 of the Obstacle Tower. The winners will proceed to round 2 which will have 100 floors, post which the winners will be announced June 14. The participants will have the opportunity to win prizes in the form of cash, travel vouchers, and Google Cloud Platform credits, valued at over $100,000.

“Each of the Tower floors are procedurally-generated, which means an AI agent must not only be able to solve a single version of the Tower but any arbitrary version as well. In this way, we’re testing the generalization ability of agents, a key capability that has not often been analyzed by benchmarks in the past.” said Danny Lange, Vice President of AI and Machine Learning, Unity Technologies.

The end goal of this challenge is to bring up new AI research and solve new problems in reinforcement learning.”

AI has been making great progress in conquering high-profile games. Recently, Google DeepMind’s AI AlphaStar defeated StarCraft II pros TLO and MaNa and won 10-1 against the gamers.