From: AAAI Technical Report WS-02-05. Compilation copyright © 2002, AAAI (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. Adventure Games: A Challenge for Cognitive Robotics Eyal Amir Patrick Doyle Computer Science Division Computer Science Department University of California at Berkeley Stanford University Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 Stanford, CA 94305-9020 [email protected] [email protected] Abstract Avoiding uselessly repetitive behaviors, This paper presents a set of challenges for cognitive robotics Coping with domains that require representing large state in the context of a text-based adventure game. Games in this spaces and reasoning with them, class have many challenging properties for cognitive robotics, Reasoning in situations that require commonsense knowl- including incompletely specified goals, an environment re- vealed only through exploration, actions whose preconditions edge (either learned or provided), and effects are not known a priori, and the need of common- Accumulating knowledge about the environment and sense knowledge for determining what actions are likely to available actions, and integrating it with existing knowl- be available or effective. These qualities require an agent that edge, is able to use commonsense knowledge, make assumptions about unavailable knowledge, revise its beliefs, and learn Revising knowledge efficiently and in a semantically cor- what actions are appropriate. At the same time, more tradi- rect way, tional robotics problems arise, including sensing, object clas- Embodying solutions to these problems in a sound and sification, focusing on relevant features on a situation, rea- semantically clear agent architecture. soning within context, and decision-making, all within a large state space. In this paper we introduce the game and its envi- As (Laird & van Lent 2001) have argued, computer games ronment, elaborate upon the properties of both as they pertain provide a natural and challenging platform for artificial in- to cognitive robotics, and argue that this is a highly advanta- telligence research. In order for an agent to perform effec- geous venue for exploring cognitive robotics issues. tively in a computer game, it must provide all of the ma- jor components of an intelligent system, namely intelligent Introduction behavior, robustness, real-time responsivity, commonsense Researchers in cognitive robotics are interested in building reasoning, planning, learning, and communication abilities. control systems for robots (physical or virtual) that use high- In this paper we present a particular game, a text-based level commonsense knowledge, yet are able to act and react adventure called CRAG (Cognitive Robotics Adventure in a complex environment. Work in this field varies from Game) built within a MUD environment (Multi-User Dun- the development of high-level control languages (Levesque geon or Dimension; for more on MUDs see (Curtis 1992; et al. 1997; Boutilier, Reiter, & Price 2001; Andre & Russell Curtis & Nichols 1994; Carroll et al. 2001)). In its task, it is 2000), to controlling robots using implemented reasoners similar to many other adventure games such as Zork (Blank based on formal languages (Baral & Tran 1998; Shanahan & Lebling 1980) and Rogue (Mauldin et al. 1984). The 1998; 2000; Amir & Maynard-Reid II 1999; 2001), plan- agent must complete a game whose ultimate goal is incom- ners (Finzi, Pirri, & Reiter 2000; Bacchus & Kabanza 2000; pletely specified at the outset, and must act in an environ- Doherty & Kvarnstrom¨ 2001) and the formalization of rea- ment whose properties are only gradually revealed as it ad- soning about action and events (Shanahan 1997; Gustafsson vances through the game. Exploration, experimentation, and & Doherty 1996; Giunchiglia, Kartha, & Lifschitz 1997; timely, flexible reasoning are emphasized over protracted ra- McCain & Turner 1997; Bacchus, Halpern, & Levesque tiocination relying upon access to all relevant knowledge. 1999; Reiter 2001). In the next section we will describe the game and its un- This paper uses a concrete problem to examine a set of derlying environment in more detail to make clear why it is core issues facing cognitive robotics. These issues include a suitable testbed for cognitive robotics research. We then look at how this list of problems might be addressed in our Specifying the goal/utility/value/reward, game, and where the challenges lie. Acting in a domain with incomplete knowledge of the possible situations, objects in the world, actions available, Properties of an Adventure Game their preconditions, or their effects, A traditional adventure game allows a single player to ex- Copyright ¡ c 2002, American Association for Artificial Intelli- plore a fantastic environment filled with opponents and trea- gence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. sures. Progress is made by exploring and manipulating the environment in order to defeat enemies and solve complex While we have implemented a traditional adventure game, puzzles. Often, but not always, the player has a general idea we have chosen to do it in an environment that permits much of an ultimate task to be completed (such as defeating the more sophisticated qualities (Doyle 2002). MUDs were in- evil wizard, saving the space station from destruction, find- spired by, and are superficially similar to, text-based adven- ing the cure for a terrible disease, etc.). For our purposes, ture game worlds, but have several other critical qualities: the salient properties of a traditional adventure game envi- 2 ronment are1: 1. MUDs are programmable. The MUD platform we use contains its own object-oriented variant of C, giving us 1. The environment is relatively static. The player is the the flexibility of a general programming language, but one principal actor and the majority of effects are the results of that is tailored to the creation of these environments. his actions. If the player drops an object and departs, the 2. MUDs are server-based, persistent worlds that allow mul- object can be expected to remain until the player returns. tiple simultaneous connections. Thus we can experiment 2. Effects of actions are local. Effects are also ordinarily with a single agent or with collections of agents operating also immediate, so a player pushing a button may expect independently, cooperatively, etc. to perceive the consequences directly. 3. We can simplify any of the above game conditions. Thus 3. The environment is discrete. The environment is com- we can assist an agent by providing additional informa- posed of objects (caves, coins, swords, trolls, levers, tion in circumstances where commonsense knowledge doors, etc.) distinct from one another. would ordinarily be required; we can introduce explicit goals to guide its behavior; we can make the environment 4. Actions are discrete. A player may turn a knob, open a entirely static except for the direct results of an agent’s door, climb a staircase, light a lantern, but actions do not behavior, and so forth. overlap in time and are atomic. 4. We can relax any of the above constraints, making the 5. There is no noise. Unless the designer explicitly intro- problem more challenging. Thus we can make the envi- duces it, there is no uncertainty either in sensing or in ac- ronment very dynamic, with objects and properties regu- tion. Items do not slip from the player’s grasp, the player larly changing; we can add noise, so that actions do not al- does not have difficulty moving through the door, hearing ways succeed or perception is not entirely reliable; we can what another character says, etc. have actions with temporally- or spatially-distant effects 6. Communication is symbolic. Both perception and action or with nondeterministic effects; we can model action in occur through a symbolic text-based interface, so low- continuous spaces, if we are concerned about subtle vari- level sensory issues don’t have to be dealt with. While ations in the agent’s actions. they form an interesting line of research, these issues are 5. Elements of the environment are running code rather than not in the core of cognitive robotics. This property al- database objects; they can perform arbitrary computations lows us to place an agent within a complex and dynamic autonomously or when the agent interacts with them. For environment without also forcing us to deal with all the example, when an agent examines a door, the door may sensory issues involved in the real world. provide different sensory data depending on its state, the 7. The player does not initially have enough information to agent’s properties, the environment’s properties, etc. solve the game. The player does not know the disposition of objects or their uses, the proper solutions to puzzles, the The Problems Presented by Adventure Games ways to defeat opponents, etc. These can only be learned We believe that the adventure game setting is well-suited through observation and experimentation. to experimental work in cognitive robotics, as it introduces 8. From any given state, it is always possible to solve the all of the problems a general cognitive robotic architecture game. Some early adventure games permitted players to would need to deal with, while allowing us considerable act in such a way as to make the game unsolvable (throw- control over the environment. Here we consider our list of ing the sword into a pit made the dragon unkillable) but core issues in the context of such an environment. current philosophy holds that the game should prevent the player from taking such actions. Thus there are