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BGonline.org Forums
Humans vs. bots
Posted By: Tom Keith In Response To: Humans vs. bots (Timothy Chow)
Date: Friday, 13 July 2012, at 7:55 p.m.
What's doable depends a lot on exactly what problem you are trying to solve. Here's an example. Suppose you have the following conditions:
- You are using a known board. That is, the software developer gets to provide the board, checkers, and dice.
- The camera is directly above the board, facing straight down, and firmly fixed so it doesn't shake.
- The lighting is very good, which is to say everything is well lit with no harsh shadows and no reflections off the board, checkers or dice.
- The camera is connected to the game clock, either by a cable or by bluetooth, and it takes a still photograph of the board every time the clock is pressed.
- The players have been trained not to lean over the board when the clock is being pressed.
You end up with a sequence of high resolution photographs, one at the end of each turn. I don't think it would be difficult to automatically transcribe a match that has been recorded in this manner. (In fact, I think these conditions make it easy enough that I could write the software myself.)
Stacked checkers shouldn't be a problem. Players would be instructed not to stack unless there are more than five checkers on a point. Then software can almost certainly figure out which point has the extra checker(s) on it by looking at the roll and previous position. And if you can't figure it out going in, you have another chance coming out.
Yes, these are easy conditions. I'm just saying what is possible or impossible depends more on the definition of the problem than on the state of current technology.
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