Graham Kendall
Title: Where games meet hyper-heuristics

Abstract: Hyper-heuristics have been successfully applied in solving a variety of computational search problems. We discuss how a hyper-heuristic can be used to generate adaptive strategies for games. Based on a set of low-level heuristics (or strategies), a hyper-heuristic game player can generate strategies which adapt to both the behaviour of the co-players and the game dynamics. By using a simple heuristic selection mechanism, a number of existing heuristics for specialised games can be integrated into an automated game player. We have developed hyper-heuristics for three games: iterated prisoner’s dilemma, repeated Goofspiel and the competitive traveling salesmen problem. The results demonstrate that a hyper-heuristic game player outperforms the low-level heuristics, when used individually in game playing and it can generate adaptive strategies even if the low-level heuristics are deterministic. This methodology provides an efficient way to develop new strategies for games based on existing strategies.

Professor Graham Kendall is the Vice-Provost for Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC). He has been in Malaysia since August 2011 and is responsible for developing and delivering the strategic aims of the University in the areas of Research and Knowledge Exchange. He is the Chief Executive Officer of MyResearch Sdn Bhd. This company has MIDA R&D status, enabling companies to invest in Research and Development in a tax efficient way. He has published over 80 refereed journal papers (the vast majority in ISI ranked journals) and over 220 peer reviewed papers in total. He has edited 11 books and authored 20 book chapters. Graham is an Associate Editor of ten journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Cognitive Neurodynamics and Computational Intelligence. He is the current editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and a Fellow of the Operational Research Society (FORS). As a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham he is a member of the Automated Scheduling, Planning and Optimisation Group (ASAP). He was awarded a BSc (Hons) First Class in Computation from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK in 1997 and received his PhD from The University of Nottingham (School of Computer Science) in 2000. His research interests include Operations Research, Scheduling, Logistics, Vehicle Routing, Meta- and Hyper-heuristics, Evolutionary Computation and Games.