Featured collaboration
University of Oxford (opens in new tab)
MSR PI: Katja Hofmann (opens in new tab)
University of Oxford PI: Shimon Whiteson (opens in new tab)
Joint Postdoctoral Researcher: Mingfei Sun
Reinforcement Learning for Gaming
This project will focus on developing and analysing state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) methods for application to video games. The project aims to tackle two key challenges. First, building effective game AI with RL requires dramatically scaling up existing tools for cooperative multi-agent RL, in which teams of agents must collaborate to complete tasks. Doing so requires new methods for performing multi-agent credit assignment and multi-agent exploration in large state and action spaces. Second, effective game AI must also be able to transfer effectively to new scenarios, such as new game levels and versions, without having to learn from scratch. Doing so requires new methods for transfer and meta-learning in RL that scale to the complexity of modern video games.
Industry collaborators
Ninja Theory (opens in new tab)
Ninja Theory was formed in 2004 by four partners, including current Directors Nina Kristensen (Chief Development Director), Tameem Antoniades (Chief Creative Director) and Jez San OBE (Non-Executive Director). The studio pride themselves on striving for the highest production values and continually pushing the boundaries of technology, art and design to create evermore exciting video game experiences.
Find out more about our collaboration with Ninja Theory on the Project Paidia page >
IGGI Centre for Doctoral Training (opens in new tab)
Industry Partner and Advisory Board Member of the IGGI Centre for Doctoral Training. (opens in new tab)
Academic Collaborations
Berkely AI Research
Learning to Collaborate with Human Players
Katja Hofmann (opens in new tab) (MSR Cambridge), Sam Devlin (opens in new tab) (MSR Cambridge), Kamil Ciosek (opens in new tab) (MSR Cambridge), Professor Anca Dragan (opens in new tab) (BAIR), Micah Carroll (PhD student)
Find out more on our Berkeley AI Research collaboration page >
Queen Mary University London (opens in new tab)
Malmo 2020 Multi-Agent Upgrade
Diego Perez Liebana (opens in new tab)
Microsoft’s Project Malmo platform enables users to create worlds and learning agents able to play multiple 3D games within Minecraft. In recent years, we have co-organised two international competitions. First on multi-agent learning and, secondly, on sample efficient reinforcement learning with human priors . These competitions have extended the features of the platform, but each introduced their own API, installation instructions and documentation, which has created an unnecessary barrier to researchers wanting to get started with the platform. The objective of this project is to unify the extensions from both competitions back into the original Malmo benchmark, to provide a common entry point for researchers.
PhD collaborations in EMEA
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Reinforcement Learning for Enabling Next Generation Human-Machine Partnerships
MSR Supervisor: Sam Devlin
External Supervisor: Adish Singla (opens in new tab)
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Local Forward Model Learning for Sample-Efficient Sequential Decision Making in Open-World 3D Games
MSR Supervisor: Sam Devlin
External Supervisor: Diego Perez Liebana (opens in new tab)
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Deep Reinforcement Learning For Collaborative Game AI To Enhance Player Experience
MSR Supervisor: Sam Devlin
External Supervisor: TBC
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Better Sample Efficiency of Reinforcement Learning
MSR Supervisor: Kamil Ciosek
External Supervisor: Amos Storkey (opens in new tab)
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Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive User Interaction
MSR Supervisor: Katja Hofmann
External Supervisor: Shimon Whiteson (opens in new tab)
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Intrinsically Motivated Exploration for Lifelong Deep Reinforcement Learning of Multiple Tasks
MSR Supervisor: Katja Hofmann
External Supervisor: Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (opens in new tab)
People
Dave Bignell
SR RESEARCH SCIENTIST
Sam Devlin
Principal Researcher
Adam Foster
Raluca Stevenson
Senior Research Scientist
Wenbo Gong
Senior Researcher
Katja Hofmann
Senior Principal Researcher
Sarah Lewis
Senior Research Engineer
Chao Ma
Krzysztof Maziarz
Senior Applied Researcher
Tom Minka
Senior Principal Researcher
Pavel Myshkov
Senior Researcher
Hannes Schulz
Senior Researcher
Marwin Segler
Principal Researcher
Shanzheng Tan
Researcher / Technical Program Manager
Jonathan Tims
Senior Software Development Engineer
Ryota Tomioka
Principal Research Manager
Sam Webster
Senior Software Development Engineer
Tian Xie
Principal Research Manager
Yordan Zaykov
Principal Research Engineering Manager
Rianne van den Berg
Principal Research Manager