The Hindu Business Line : IIIT-H aims big in artificial intelligence

THE International Institute for Information Technology-Hyderabad is eyeing the growing area of artificial intelligence, which has applications ranging from computer vision and language technology to robotics.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Prof Rajeev Sangal, said that Infosys Technology has partnered with the institute to promote artificial intelligence by sponsoring students for the RoboCup 2005.

As part of the drive, the students took part in the RoboCup, and became successful among participants from about 40 countries. In 2002-2003, the institute started developing a team for the RoboSoccer simulation league , which was christened Kshitij, a Sanskrit word for the horizon. By the year 2025, RoboCup aims to evolve a situation where robots may actually qualify for the Soccer World Cup just like their human counterparts.

The RoboSoccer is a competition that simulates soccer competition for software agents. Institutes develop teams of software agents to play soccer in a virtual field.

In the RoboSoccer competition, these teams compete against multi-agent soccer teams developed by other institutions in the format that closely resembles FIFA Soccer World Cup.

Thus each agent is like a virtual soccer player who has to perceive the environment, take decisions, cooperate with his team-mates and perform in the environment. As part of this innovative exercise, students from the institute competed at Osaka, Japan, and achieved the third rank.

As an extension of this exercise, the students have also simulated a situation where a city is faced with a natural disaster, and an emergency response system can address such a situation. All of this has been generated using artificial intelligence technologies.

Prof Sangal said that the ambitious initiative of PCTVT, which was initiated by the IT institute with Dr Raj Reddy of the Robotics Lab of the Carnegie Mellon University, is likely to be deployed in the Andhra Pradesh broadband project.

The prototype of the PCTVT, a combination of a low-cost computer and entertainment device, costing about Rs 10,000, is ready, he said.

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