The 2009 BotPrize Contest has been decided!
None of the bots was able to fool enough judges to take the major prize. But all the bots fooled at least one of the judges.
The most human-like bot was sqlitebot by Jeremy Cothran. The joint runners up were anubot from Chris Pelling and ICE-2009 from the team from Ritsumeikan University, Japan. Jeremy and Chris are both new entrants, and the ICE team were also runners up in 2008.
Complete results are now available here.
2009 finalists selected
The 5 finalists for the 2009 BotPrize contest have been decided. Qualifying trials took place at Edith Cowan University in Perth over 7,8 and 9 July, to select the best 5 bots from the 15 teams that entered this year. See this page for details of the selected teams.
One week to go
Preparations are frenetic with one week to the finals. The final bots are being trained, the judging panel is selected, and the trophies have been made (by Perth sculptor Peter Reynolds - see picture - left). The winners' trophy is about 60cm tall, and the judges' one slightly shorter. The colour is "vampires' blood".
2009 BotPrize contest
The second 2K BotPrize contest will be held in Milan, Italy, in September 2009, as part of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.
The aim of the contest is to see if a computer game playing bot can play like a human. In the contest, bots try to convince a panel of expert judges that they are actually human players.
Computers are superbly fast and accurate at playing games, but can they be programmed to be more fun to play - to play like you and me? People like to play against opponents who are like themselves - opponents with personality, who can surprise, who sometimes make mistakes, yet don't blindly make the same mistakes over and over. Can a computer be programmed to seem to have personality, fallibility and cunning?
The first contest was held in Perth, Western Australia in December 2008. Although none of the competitors was able to fool 4 out of 5 judges and take the major prize, some did fool 2 out of 5! You can read about the 2008 contest here.
As they did in 2008, Game Development Studio 2K Australia is offering a prize of A$7,000 cash plus a trip to their studio in Canberra for anyone who can create a bot to pass this "Turing Test for Bots".
