On the surface, bidirectional search (BDS) is an attractive idea with the potential for significant asymptotic reductions in search effort. However, the results in practice often fall far short of expectations. We introduce a new bidirectional search algorithm, Single-Frontier Bidirectional Searc (SFBDS). Unlike traditional BDS which keeps two frontiers, SFBDS uses a single frontier. Each node in the tree can be seen as an independent task of finding the shortest path between the current start and current goal. At a particular node we can decide to search from start to goal or from goal to start, choosing the direction with the highest potential for minimizing the total work done. Theoretical results give insights as to when this approach will work and experimental data validates the algorithm for a broad range of domains.

Many search algorithms have parameters that need to be tuned to get the best performance. Typically, the parameters are tuned offline, resulting in a generic setting that is supposed to be effective on all problem instances. For suboptimal single-agent search, problem-instance-specific parameter settings can result in substantially reduced search effort. We consider the use of dovetailing as a way to take advantage of this fact. Dovetailing is a procedure that performs search with multiple parameter settings simultaneously. Dovetailing is shown to improve the search speed of weighted IDA* by several orders of magnitude and to generally enhance the performance of weighted RBFS. This procedure is trivially parallelizable and is shown to be an effective form of parallelization for WA* and BULB. In particular, using WA* with parallel dovetailing yields good speedups in the sliding-tile puzzle domain, and increases the number of problems solved when used in an automated planning system.

The conference time was dominated by academic presentations. Attempts to solicit papers from industry were largely unsuccessful; most industry AI people do not have the time or experience to write papers that will survive a rigorous review process. AIIDE'07, we opted for 10 invited It featured 10 (!) invited The new format digital entertainment systems seems to have met with universal with an emphasis on commercial computer approval. Historically This year we added a collocated there has been a disconnect between workshop, the second annual Workshop the work done in academe and that on Optimizing Player Satisfaction. The interacting, so that the academics The invited talks are always the conference series began in 2005, but it can better understand the highlight of AIIDE, especially this year.

In 1950, Claude Shannon published his seminal work on how to program a computer to play chess. In Shannon's time, it would have seemed unlikely that only a scant 50 years would be needed to develop programs that play world-class backgammon, checkers, chess, Othello, and Scrabble. Computer games research is one of the important success stories of AI. This article reviews the past successes, current projects, and future research directions for AI using computer games as a research test bed.

In Shannon's time, it would have seemed Around this time, Arthur Samuel began work the capabilities of computational intelligence. By 1958, Alan Newell and Herb Simon the game world with the real world--the game had begun their investigations into chess, of life--where the rules often change, the which eventually led to fundamental results scope of the problem is almost limitless, and for AI and cognitive science (Newell, Shaw, and the participants interact in an infinite number Simon 1958). An impressive lineup to say the of ways. Games can be a microcosm of the real least! Indeed, one of the early goals of AI was to and chess programs could play at a build a program capable of defeating the level comparable to the human world champion. This These remarkable accomplishments are the challenge proved to be more difficult than was result of a better understanding of the anticipated; the AI literature is replete with problems being solved, major algorithmic optimistic predictions. It eventually took insights, and tremendous advances in hardware almost 50 years to complete the task--a technology. The work on computer remarkably short time when one considers the games has been one of the most successful and software and hardware advances needed to visible results of AI research. The results are truly of the progress in building a world-class amazing. Even though there is an exponential program for the game is given, along with a difference between the best case and the brief description of the strongest program. The histories are necessarily case (Plaat et al. 1996). Games reports the past successes where computers realizing the lineage of the ideas.

In 1992, the seemingly unbeatable World Checker Champion Marion Tinsley defended his title against the computer program CHINOOK. After an intense, tightly contested match, Tinsley fought back from behind to win the match by scoring four wins to CHINOOK's two, with 33 draws. This match was the first time in history that a human world champion defended his title against a computer. This article reports on the progress of the checkers (8 3 8 draughts) program CHINOOK since 1992. Two years of research and development on the program culminated in a rematch with Tinsley in August 1994. In this match, after six games (all draws), Tinsley withdrew from the match and relinquished the world championship title to CHINOOK,citing health concerns. CHINOOK has since defended its title in two subsequent matches. It is the first time in history that a computer has won a human-world championship.

In August 1992, the world checkers champion, Marion Tinsley, defended his title against the computer program CHINOOK. Because of its success in human tournaments, CHINOOK had earned the right to play for the world championship. Tinsley won the best-of-40-game match with a score of 4 wins, 2 losses, and 33 draws. This event was the first time in history that a program played for a human world championship and might be a prelude to what is to come in chess. This article tells the story of the first Man versus Machine World Championship match.