The University of Alberta (UA) computing science department helped Edmonton game developer BioWare solve a pathfinding challenge in one of its videogames. The UA researchers were faced with the challenge of creating pathfinding programming capable of navigating complicated scenarios while minimizing the amount of memory needed. The researchers, led by UA professor Nathan Sturtevant, broke the decision-making process into separate levels, enabling the computer to calculate the steps needed by the character. “One of the things I really wanted to see was that if a character is standing on one side of the game map, would it be possible to mouse click on the farthest point away and watch your character then walk for 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds and get to where you wanted them to go?” Sturtevant says.
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A new system for identifying potential Internet threats has been developed by researchers at the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas. Designed to analyze behavioral data, the system monitors network traffic and provides an alert when it notices worrisome deviations in normal activity. “We proposed a novel platform that thoroughly analyzes network traffic behavior to identify potential Internet threats,” says UT Dallas professor Mehrdad Nourani. The technology uses two subsystems that work in parallel to reach a high speed and use memory efficiently, which allows for faster results and optimal use of resources. A bell-shaped curve of normal activity is built, and it can achieve nearly zero false positives and negatives when identifying abnormalities outside the curve. Nourani says the technology also could be used to analyze health data and detect abnormal health issues such as heart arrhythmia, sleep apnea, or epileptic seizure.
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Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and Cornell University are developing PhotoCity, a system that uses graphics algorithms to create three-dimensional (3D) renderings of buildings, neighborhoods, and cities from unstructured collections of two-dimensional digital photos. To improve the quality of the renderings, the researchers plan to combine their system with a social game that permits teams to add images where they are needed to improve the visual models. The researchers also plan to accept public submissions, in an effort to collect 3D renderings of cities such as New York and San Francisco. The emergence of such collaborative systems has great promise for capturing the creative abilities of people and networked computers, says the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Peter Lee.

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