Computers teach each other to play PAC MAN

Children of the 1980s spent hours perfecting the art of playing Namco's Pac-Man computer game. And now computers are teaching each other to play the popular game, which sees a player navigating a maze, trying to gobble up pellets while avoiding four colourful enemies. Researchers have managed to develop a method to allow a computer to give advice and teach skills to another computer in a way that mimics how a real teacher and student might interact - and are demonstrating it with video games. The team, which was led by Matthew Taylor, Washington State University's Allred Distinguished Professor in Artificial Intelligence, used virtual robots called agents to simulate the teacher and student relationship. The student robots initially struggled to learn Pac-Man and a version of the video game StarCraft, but the scientists were able to show that with time the student agent learned the games and surpassed the teacher's abilities.