[alife] 2017 Virtual Creatures Competition -- Deadline Extension

[Nicholas Cheney]

Hi all,

*The submission deadline for this year's Virtual Creatures Competition has
been extended to June 20th.  Please find the details below, and we look
forward to seeing your videos!*

On behalf of Joel Lehman, Sebastian Risi and myself, I'm pleased to invite
you to submit your videos of evolved virtual creatures to the fourth annual
Virtual Creatures Competition, in conjunction with the Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation Conference in Berlin (conference attendance not
required for competition participation).

The contest's purpose is to highlight progress in virtual creatures research
and showcase evolutionary computation's ability to craft interesting
well-adapted creatures with evolved morphologies and/or controllers.  This
year we have expanded the entry requirements to include both evolved
morphologies and controllers in embodied agents, and we invite the entire
field of evolutionary robotics to submit video entries showcasing your
work.

Details are copied below, and can be found at: https://virtualcreatures.g
ithub.io/vc2017/submit/

Entry Submission

Entrants must submit a video (up to 5 minutes in length), along with a
brief description (one page maximum) describing the video and the
evolutionary approach underlying it (with references to a more complete
technical description if it exists). The video should demonstrate an
evolved virtual creature (or many such creatures) engaging in interesting
well-adapted behavior.

Submissions should be emailed to nac93 at cornell.edu by* June 20, 2017*.
Videos should be submitted as a link to an online movie service like vimeo
(or youtube). Entries will be acknowledged on receipt. Note that judges
will watch videos with sound enabled if you choose to include audio with
your video.
Requirements

For the purposes of this contest, “virtual creatures” are roughly defined
as having evolved morphology and/or control, and being evaluated in
physical simulation (2D or 3D). This definition is purposefully indefinite,
and acknowledges that it is hard to explicitly delineate between virtual
creatures and evolutionary robotics as a whole. Please feel free to email
the organizers if you have a potential submission of which you are unsure
if it will qualify.

Judges will be advised of this rough definition, and if more than half of
the judges flag an entry as not relevant to the competition, it will be
disqualified. Based on previous competitions, the organizers do not think
this mechanism is likely to be executed in practice.
Evaluation

Video entries will be judged equally over the following criteria, with a
winner selected for best overall score, and honorable mention for all
entries in the Pareto front.

   - Perceptual Animacy (perceived aliveness)
   - Technical Achievement
   - Aesthetic Appeal
   - Innovation

Presentation

Finalists selected by the jury will be invited to present their submission
at the competition session, held during the GECCO conference. The winner of
the competition will be announced at the SIGEVO meeting ceremony.

Videos of finalists not attending the conference will be presented by the
organizers, and for all participants, anonymized feedback from the judges
will be forwarded. After the contest is over, results will be posted to the
website, and winners not attending the conference will be notified.
Important Dates

   - Submission deadline: June 20, 2017
   - Notification of Finalists: July 14, 2017
   - Conference: July 15-19, 2017

Juding PanelTo be announced.

Organizers

Nicholas Cheney <nac93 at cornell.edu>, Cornell University
Sebastian Risi <sebr at itu.dk>, IT University of Copenhagen
Joel Lehman <lehman.154 at gmail.com>, Uber AI Labs
Thank you, and we anxiously await the opportunity to view and showcase all
of your videos!


Best Regards,
Nick Cheney
---------------------------------------
Cornell Creative Machines Lab
www.ncheney.com