News

IT Carlow Wins Big at Games Fleadh

13/03/2017

Games Fleadh Winners at ITCarlowComputer Games Development students created a smart robot which defeated the other competing colleges and universities during thirty robotic MMA style battles.  The Institute’s students also demonstrated computer game titles which won Visual Effects and Artificial Intelligence Engineering Awards. One team in particular created intellect bots to repair gameplay, helping a human player defeat all other human competitors. Dr. Oisín Cawley, who lectures in Artificial Intelligence at IT Carlow, set students the challenge of creating intelligence bots which would play through games without any human intervention.

The seven awards won by the students are: Robocode Marshal Champions; Best in Visual Engineering; Best in Artificial Intelligence; Best in Gameplay; Best in Use of Cloud Technology; Best in Multiplayer; Games Studio Ireland Challenge (runners-up)

Commenting on this year’s success, Dr. Cawley said, “Building intelligent systems in computer challenging environments such as games will yield discoveries which can also be applied in non-gaming domains, such as financial services, automotive, healthcare and utility industries. The concepts students learn, such as behaviour trees, fuzzy logic, or Artificial Neural Networks are universally applicable”.

Welcoming back the award winning teams, Nigel Whyte, head of the Computing Department at Institute of Technology Carlow “The artificial intelligence era of computing is here and IT Carlow students are developing the skills to build smart systems that will improve our lives and environment as the world is wrapped in a fabric of sensors that will be monitored and controlled by the Artificial Intelligence our students created”.

Caption:
The winning Games Fleadh team with staff, from left: Oisin Cawley, Stephen Donegan, Liam Howe, Philip Bourke, Michael Lyons, Darren Sweeney, Jamie Jackson, Nigel Whyte, Sean Byrne, Dion Buckley, Jason Power.