The competition is now live, with v1.0 released, official rules and further information about the syllabus available here and from the competition website and GitHub page. We are performing the last few tests on the evaluation platform and the competition and submission instructions will be pushed to EvalAI by July 8th, at which point it will be possible to submit your entry and see how well it performs.
The Animal-AI Olympics is an AI competition with tests inspired by animal cognition. Participants are given a small environment with just seven different classes of objects that can be placed inside. In each test, the agent needs to retrieve the food in the environment, but to do so there are obstacles to overcome, ramps to climb, boxes to push, and areas that must be avoided. The real challenge is that we don't provide the tests in advance. It's up to you to play with the environment and build interesting setups that can help create an agent that understands how the environment's physics work and the affordances that it has. The final submission should be an agent capable of robust food retrieval behaviour similar to that of many kinds of animals. We know the animals can pass these tests, it's time to see if AI can too.
The top 20 entries (overall score) on September 1st will be awarded $500 of AWS credits for use in the second half of the competition. Participants will have to opt-in for these prizes to be considered eligible and conform with the AWS terms of service.
The 300 tests have been finalised and we can now reveal the full ten categories. Note that all tests are pass/fail based on achieving a score above a certain threshold. In most cases, this corresponds to retrieving the only piece of food in the environment. The tests in each category range from relatively easy - solvable by most to all animals - to very hard, solvable by only a few animals and expected to be left unsolved at the end of the competition. As always, further information is available from the competition website and GitHub page.
We have also simplified the environment and used some conventions to make the tests as achievable as possible. Unnecessary objects have been removed from the environment. In the tests, walls that are used as walls are mostly grey, walls used as platforms (that can't be climbed) are blue, and ramps are pink. More details in the docs on the GitHub. You can also find example training files under examples/configs for the first seven categories. These are just guidelines to get started and do not contain enough detail to solve the full category. For the last three you're on your own!
This competition would not have been possible without our sponsors.
Sponsor/Partner | Thanks |
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Thanks to Amazon for sponsoring the research credit prizes and also the infrastructure for running all the tests required over the course of the competition. |
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Thanks to Unity Technologies for sponsoring prizes and providing the environment, both the Unity Platform and ML-Agents which we have used to build the competition environment. |
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Thanks to the Whole Brain Architecture Initiative for sponsoring a prize for the most biologically inspired entry. |
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Thanks to AIJ for funding to be put towards travel prizes to bring top competition entrants together to present their work. |
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Thanks to EvalAI for hosting the competition. |
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Thanks to GoodAI for supporting the competition from its initial planning stages. Without them it would not be possible to grow into the project that it has become. |
Thanks to the Leverhulme Trust and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence for funding the research that went into designing and building this competition. |
Full details about the rules and regulations of the competition and the prizes we offer can be found on the main competition website.
*Travel allowance for NeurIPs can be used to cover conference registration, economy travel and accommodation up to a total of $1,000
*To be applicable for the WBA prize applicants must write a 2-page description of their approach (submission details TBC). They will be judged primarily on biological plausibility and this will be weighed against performance. An independent panel of experts will be convened for this purpose and their decision will be final.
*Category cash prizes are awarded in descending order of categories. The prize goes to the first place entry for each individual category that has not already won a prize of equal or greater value. Any entrant that has already received a larger or equal prize will also receive a certificate.