A computer program that uses AI planning techniques is now the world champion computer program in the game of Contract Bridge. As reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post, this program--a new version of Great Game Products' The classical approach used in AI programs for games of strategy is to do a game tree search using the well-known minimax formula (eq. 1) The minimax computation is basically a bruteforce search: If implemented as formulated here, it would examine every node in the game tree. In practical implementations of minimax game tree searching, a number of techniques are used to improve the efficiency of this computation: putting a bound on the depth of the search, using alpha-beta pruning, doing transposition-table lookup, and so on. However, even with enhancements such as these, minimax computations often involve examining huge numbers of nodes in the game tree. Because a Bridge hand is typically played in just a few minutes, there is not enough time for a game tree search to search enough of this tree to make good decisions.

Robot bridge inspector uses sensors and machine learning to hunt for defects Researchers at the University of Nevada have developed an autonomous robot, designed to inspect bridges and detect any structural damage before it can cause potential injury. The four-wheeled robot bridge inspector, called Seekur, uses a variety of tools to carry out its important task. Researchers at the University of Nevada have developed an autonomous robot, designed to inspect bridges and detect any structural damage before it can cause potential injury. The four-wheeled robot bridge inspector, called Seekur, uses a variety of tools to carry out its important task.

Autonomous bridge-inspecting robot could save lives by using smart sensors and machine learning algorithms to detect dangerous defects. Researchers at the University of Nevada have developed an autonomous robot, designed to inspect bridges and detect any structural damage before it can cause potential injury. The four-wheeled robot bridge inspector, called Seekur, uses a variety of tools to carry out its important task. These include ground-penetrating radar for looking beneath the surface of a bridge for underlying instabilities, sensors designed to search for possible corrosion of steel or cement, and a camera which analyzes cracks in the bridge's surface. A machine learning algorithm then analyzes all of this information and uses it to generate a color-coded map, which is passed on to (human) engineers to make them aware of weak spots.

Bridge Baron is a computer program that plays bridge. It won the 1997 world championship of computer bridge, the Baron Barclay World Bridge Computer Challenge, as reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The five-day competition, which was hosted by the American Contract Bridge League in July 1997, included five computer programs, from the US, Japan, and Germany. The Bridge Baron won every head-to-head match that it played against the other programs.

Contract bridge is an example of an incomplete information game for which computers typically do not perform better than expert human bridge players. In particular, the typical bidding decisions of human bridge players are difficult to mimic with a computer program, and thus automatic bridge bidding remains to be a challenging research problem. Currently, the possibility of automatic bidding without mimicking human players has not been fully studied. In this work, we take an initiative to study such a possibility for the specific problem of bidding without competition. We propose a novel learning framework to let a computer program learn its own bidding decisions. The framework transforms the bidding problem into a learning problem, and then solves the problem with a carefully designed model that consists of cost-sensitive classifiers and upper-confidence-bound algorithms. We validate the proposed model and find that it performs competitively to the champion computer bridge program that mimics human bidding decisions.

This paper investigates the problems arising in the construction of a program to play the game of contract bridge. These problems include both the difficulty of solving the game's perfect information variant, and techniques needed to address the fact that bridge is not, in fact, a perfect information game. GIB, the program being described, involves five separate technical advances: partition search, the practical application of Monte Carlo techniques to realistic problems, a focus on achievable sets to solve problems inherent in the Monte Carlo approach, an extension of alpha-beta pruning from total orders to arbitrary distributive lattices, and the use of squeaky wheel optimization to find approximately optimal solutions to cardplay problems. GIB is currently believed to be of approximately expert caliber, and is currently the strongest computer bridge program in the world.

Collusion is a major unsolved security problem in online bridge: by illicitly exchanging card information over the telephone, instant messenger or the like, cheaters can gain huge advantages over honest players. It is very hard if not impossible to prevent collusion from happening. Instead, we motivate an AI-based detection approach and discuss its challenges. We challenge the AI community to create automated methods for detecting collusive traces left in game records with an accuracy that can be achieved by human masters.

This paper investigates the problems arising in the construction of a program to play the game of contract bridge. These problems include both the difficulty of solving the game's perfect information variant, and techniques needed to address the fact that bridge is not, in fact, a perfect information game. GIB, the program being described, involves five separate technical advances: partition search, the practical application of Monte Carlo techniques to realistic problems, a focus on achievable sets to solve problems inherent in the Monte Carlo approach, an extension of alpha-beta pruning from total orders to arbitrary distributive lattices, and the use of squeaky wheel optimization to find approximately optimal solutions to cardplay problems. GIB is currently believed to be of approximately expert caliber, and is currently the strongest computer bridge program in the world.

A computer program that uses AI planning techniques is now the world champion computer program in the game of Contract Bridge. As reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post, this program -- a new version of Great Game Products' BRIDGE BARON program -- won the Baron Barclay World Bridge Computer Challenge, an international competition hosted in July 1997 by the American Contract Bridge League. It is well known that the game tree search techniques used in computer programs for games such as Chess and Checkers work differently from how humans think about such games. This article gives an overview of the planning techniques that we have incorporated into the BRIDGE BARON and discusses what the program's victory signifies for research on AI planning and game playing.

A computer program that uses AI planning techniques is now the world champion computer program in the game of Contract Bridge. As reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post, this program -- a new version of Great Game Products' BRIDGE BARON program -- won the Baron Barclay World Bridge Computer Challenge, an international competition hosted in July 1997 by the American Contract Bridge League. It is well known that the game tree search techniques used in computer programs for games such as Chess and Checkers work differently from how humans think about such games. In contrast, our new version of the BRIDGE BARON emulates the way in which a human might plan declarer play in Bridge by using an adaptation of hierarchical task network planning. This article gives an overview of the planning techniques that we have incorporated into the BRIDGE BARON and discusses what the program's victory signifies for research on AI planning and game playing.