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July 13, 2006

Natural Selection, Inc. Publishes Article on the Evolution of Intelligently Interative Game Characters in BioSystems

La Jolla, CA - As a collaborative effort, Dr. David Fogel, CEO, and Tim Hays, Senior Staff Scientist of Natural Selection, Inc., together with Doug Johnson of Digenetics, Inc. have published a paper titled "A Platform for Evolving Intelligently Interactive Adversaries" in the journal BioSystems. One of the challenges of designing games with broad appeal concerns creating nonplayer (computer-controlled) characters that can adapt their behavior in light of the current and prospective situation. In doing so, these characters may emulate human behavior. Evolutionary algorithms were used to generate a platform to evolve nonplayer characters with genetic and behavioral traits within the context of a World War I combat flight simulator. The project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

"This work provides the foundation for a new genre of evolutionary entertainment products," said Dr. Fogel. "In the future, players will be able to evolve intelligent digital characters and compete them in various settings. Our World War I flight simulator provides an example in which each airplane is an evolvable character, complete with genetic and behavioral traits that can adapt to conditions. Over generations of simulated evolution, the fighter planes become more skilled at dogfighting without any human intervention."

Natural Selection, Inc. was founded in 1993 to address complex problems in industry, medicine, and defense. The company possesses unique expertise in computational intelligence techniques, including evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. The corporation's research efforts support the discovery of new pharmaceuticals, the automated detection and discovery of important patterns and processes in bioinformatics and medical informatics, computer-assisted diagnosis, and a variety of military and industrial projects.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. David B. Fogel
CEO
Natural Selection, Inc.
3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct.
Suite 200
La Jolla, CA, 92037
tel: (858) 455-6449
fax: (858) 455-1560
dfogel@natural-selection.com

and please visit our web site at http://www.natural-selection.com/.