August 6-9, 2013, Beijing, China.

Angry Birds is a popular video game where the task is to shoot birds with different properties from a slingshot at a structure that houses pigs and to destroy the pigs. The structure can be very complicated and can involve a number of different object categories with different properties. The game and the structure largely observes the laws of physics and it is possible to infer how the structure will change when hit at a certain position.

The task of this competition is to develop an intelligent Angry Birds playing agent that is able to successfully play the game autonomously and without human intervention. The long term goal is to build AI agents that can play new levels better than the best human players. This may require analyzing the structure of the objects and to infer how to shoot the birds in order to destroy the pigs and to score most points. In order to successfully solve this challenge, participants can benefit from combining different areas of AI such as computer vision, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning, heuristic search, and machine learning. Successfully integrating methods from these areas is one of the great challenges of AI.

Since it cannot be expected that all participants can develop all these capabilities themselves, the organizers will provide a basic game playing software that is implemented using Java and includes the following components:

• a computer vision component that can analyse a video game frame and identifies the location, category and bounding box of all relevant objects plus the game score
• a trajectory component that calculates trajectories of birds and computes where to shoot from in order to hit a given location
• a game playing component that executes actions and captures screen shots

Participants are free to use these components or can develop their own components. Note that there is a small amount of uncertainty in the output that the supplied components produce and participants should take this into account when developing their programs.

The basic game playing software includes a sample agent that demonstrates the use of the provided components. The sample agent only detects birds, pigs, and the slingshot, and shoots birds directly at the detected pigs using random trajectories. The sample agent also serves as the baseline that all participants have to beat.

The basic game playing software including the sample agent can be downloaded here. We also offer a discussion forum for participants. Please refer to the competition homepage aibirds.org for more details.

The IJCAI 2013 Angry Birds AI Competition is designed to test the abilities of Angry Birds playing agents on a variety of Angry Birds levels. The competition will be run using a client/server architecture, where the game server runs an instance of Angry Birds Chrome game for each participating Angry Birds agent. Agents run on a client computer and communicate with the server via a given protocol that allows agents to obtain screen shots of their game window from the server at any time. Agents can also obtain the current competition high scores for each level from the server. In return, agents send the server their shooting actions (release coordinate and tap time) which the server will then execute in the corresponding game window. More details about the competition rules and the communication protocol will be available soon. A summary of the 1st Angry Birds AI competition held in December 2012 can be found here. We also prepared an overview of the performance of the participating agents that can be used as a comparison.

The IJCAI 2013 Angry Birds AI Competition will run over three days, from August 6-8, 2013 during the IJCAI 2013 main conference. There will be two days of qualification rounds on August 6-7, where the participants for the finals will be determined. Time limit and number of Angry Birds levels to be solved during the qualification round will depend on the number of participants. The finals of the best teams will be held on August 8. The number of teams that can enter the competition will be limited. The organizers reserve the right to end registration early, if the number of registered participants exceeds the number of teams that can be processed during the two qualification days.

During the finals, there will be a time limit to play a given set of Angry Birds levels automatically and without any human intervention. All levels can be accessed at any time. The agent to achieve the highest combined game score over all levels will be the winner of the competition.

Note that the actual game levels used during the competition will not be disclosed to the participants in advance. However, participants will be informed in advance about the birds and the object categories used in the competition game levels, so that their behaviour can be learned in advance.

During the qualification round, each team will be given the opportunity to briefly introduce their team, their agent, and the methods and strategies used before we run the agent. Teams who qualify for the finals will be given another presentation slot on finals day. Participants are encouraged to prepare a poster with this information that will be displayed during the competition. Remote participants can email a poster consisting of up to 9 A4/Letter pages.

The competition is open to all registered participants who submit a working Angry Birds game playing program to the organisers by July 30. Remote participation is possible, but attendance is encouraged. Each submission must be accompanied by a one page description of the methods and strategies used by the agent and why it is an improvement over the provided sample agent. This information will not be disclosed to other competitors before the competition.

All participating teams need to register. Registration will be open soon.

Early registration fee for registration by June 30 will be USD 100 per participating agent. Late registration up to July 30 will be USD 150. Registration after July 30 will be only on request. Attending the competition will also require registration for the IJCAI main conference.

Each person can be a member of at most two teams, unless permission has been obtained from the organizers. This restriction does not apply to academic supervisors of student teams.

The teams of the three best agents will receive a prize as well as a certificate.

• First prize: USD 1500
• Second prize: USD 1000
• Third prize: USD 500

All participants of the finals will also receive a certificate.

During the competition, there will be a limited opportunity to present original scientific work related to the problems of developing an Angry Birds playing agent. This includes but is not limited to problems related to computer vision, heuristic search, knowledge representation and reasoning, AI planning, diagnosis, and machine learning in the context of Angry Birds.

Papers must be submitted by June 30 and will be reviewed by the program committee. Authors will be notified by July 14 and camera ready versions of accepted papers are due by July 28.

Submitted papers will not be made available to any competition participants before the start of the competition.

For further details about the Symposium, please refer to the Call for Papers.

In the Angry Birds: Man vs Machine Challenge on August 9 we give interested participants the opportunity to compete with the winners of the Angry Birds AI competition. Participants can test if their Angry Birds playing skills are still better than those of the best AI agents. This might be the last chance to beat AI and to become quite possibly the last human to win this challenge.

Participants will play a number of Angry Birds levels within a given time limit. Current and previous levels can be played again. For each participant we will record their personal high scores for each of the solved levels. Once the human participants are finished, we will run the two best Angry Birds agents from the AI competition on the same levels with the same time limit.

The participant with the highest combined score, man or machine, will be the winner of this challenge. The winner will be awarded with a prize of USD 500 and a certificate. Further details and registration information will be available later.

• Attending the IJCAI 2013 conference is not required for participating in the competition. Remote participation will be possible, provided that participants have tested by July 30 that their game playing agents run on our competition environment. However, all participants who attend the competition will need to register for IJCAI 2013.
• Participating agents can be developed in any programming language provided that it can be run in the competition environment and uses the standard communication protocal. Additional requirements need to be agreed upon with the organizers and need to be tested by July 30.
• Qualification versions of the game playing agents need to be submitted to the organisers by August 5, 1pm, Beijing time. For those teams who qualify for the finals, the final version needs to be submitted by August 8, 8am Beijing time. These deadlines are final. If no new version has been submitted, we will use the last version we have received.
• We will be using the Chrome version of Angry Birds for our competition.
• Agents will not have access to the internet and will not be able to communicate other than with the server via the specified communication protocol.
• Each person can only be affiliated with at most two participating agents unless permission has been obtained from the organizers. This restriction does not apply to academic supervisors of student teams.
• The detailed rules of the competiton and the communication protocol will be available soon.

• Jochen Renz, Australian National University
• Stephen Gould, Australian National University
• XiaoYu (Gary) Ge, Australian National University

All enquiries should be made by email to angrybirdscompetition at gmail.com.

For Competition Participants:
Early Registration Deadline:
30 June 2013
Late Registration Deadline (may be closed early):
30 July 2013
Initial Agent Submission for Compatibility Testing:
30 July 2013
Agent Submission for Qualification:
5 August 2013, 1pm, Beijing time.
Agent Submission for Finals:
8 August 2013, 8am, Beijing time.
Qualification:
6-7 August 2013
Finals:
8 August 2013
Man vs Machine Challenge:
9 August 2013

For Symposium papers:
Submission Deadline:
30 June 2013
Acceptance Notification:
14 July 2013
Camera Ready Deadline:
28 July 2013