> A Special Session at IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and
> Games
> Perth, Australia
> 15-18 December, 2008

> Special Session Chairs: Julian Togelius, Alan Blair and Philip
> Hingston
> Contact: julian.togelius AT gmail.com

> Submission deadline: 15 July 2008
> ( see the call for papers athttp://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cig08/cfp.html
> )

> Description:

> In coevolution, the fitness of a solution is determined not (only) by
> a fixed fitness function, but also by the other solution(s) being
> evaluated. Thus, coevolution has the potential to overcome several
> problems with static fitness functions, paving the way for more open-
> ended evolution. However, several phenomena common to coevolutionary
> algorithms are at present poorly understood, including cycling and
> loss of gradient. Further understanding of such phenomena would
> facilitate more widespread use of coevolutionary algorithms.

> This special session seeks to bring together research that uses
> coevolutionary algorithms to learn to play games, uses games to
> investigate coevolution, or uses coevolution as a basis for game
> design. Due to their adversarial nature, often involving interaction
> of multiple agents, games are uniquely suited to be combined with
> coevolution. We invite both theoretical and applied work in the
> intersection of coevolution and games, including but not limited to
> the following topics:

> Competitive coevolution
> Cooperative coevolution
> Multiple populations in coevolution
> Coevolution with diverse representations
> Theory of coevolution
> Preventing cycling and loss of gradient
> Coevolution-based game design
> Self-play and coevolutionary-like reinforcement learning
> Relative versus absolute fitness metrics

> About the organisers:

> Julian Togelius is a researcher at the Dalle Molle Institute for
> Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) in Lugano, Switzerland. His research
> interests include evolving game-playing agents, modelling player
> behaviour, and evolving interesting game content, mainly using
> evolutionary and coevolutionary techniques. He also co-organizes the
> well-attended Simulated Car Racing Competitions for the IEEE CIG and
> CEC conferences.

> Philip Hingston is an associate professor of computer science at Edith
> Cowan University in Perth. His research interests are in the theory
> and application of artificial intelligence and computational
> intelligence. He has a particular interest in evolutionary computation
> as a tool for design, and in computer games. He is chair of the IEEE
> CIS Task Force on co-evolution. More information can be found on his
> home page at:http://www.scis.ecu.edu.au/Staff/staffinfo.aspx?staffid=phingsto.

> Alan Blair is Chair of the IEEE CIS Task Force on Co-evolution and
> Games. His research interests include robot navigation, image and
> language processing as well as co-evolutionary learning for
> Backgammon, Tron, IPD, simulated hockey and language games. His
> homepage is at:http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~blair.