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What is The Gatekeeper Project? The Gatekeeper Project is an event for the 1999 MIT AI Olympics, to be held at the MIT
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory during the last week of January. In this event,
the AI Olympics teams are asked to write software that will decide whether to open an
automatic sliding door given images taken from a camera mounted above it. Points are
awarded when a team's system admits one of their team members, and are deducted when it
admits a member of another team. Detailed rules for the
competition can be found at this site, as well as the materials
needed to begin writing a Gatekeeper. So, what's the story? After a long day of leaping tall buildings and riding around in the Invisible Jet, superheroes enjoy mingling at high soceity functions with their super-peers. Only the creme de la creme are allowed into the most exclusive superhero club, Chez Viola, situated on the prestigious 7th floor of the fantastic Northeast 43rd building. To be seen at Chez Viola is to be recognized as the upper crust of superhero soceity. Since its creation, Captain America has acted as a doorman for Chez Viola, only allowing the right kind of superheroes inside. However, lately the Captain has been annoying many guests with long winded patriotic speeches and stories about his many adventures in the quest against evil, so he has been let go. Chez Viola has decided to instead trust the task of screening the guests to DoorKalls R Us, (Ben Bitdiddle, Chairman and CEO). DoorKalls has installed a vision-based recognition system coupled with an automatic sliding door that detects signs of high culture in guests and admits them accordingly. Unfortunately, DoorKalls R Us hasn't invested much time in making their system secure, making it quite easy for superhero hackers to take control of the door security system for a short period of time. In order to increase the status of your superhero clan, you would like to make sure that as many of your people as possible are able to join the party at Chez Viola, while preventing as many of your competitors from attendings as possible, thereby reducing their status. Furthermore, if you can make the DoorKalls system recognize your members by name, and anounce their entry into Chez Viola, you'll be sure to turn the heads of all those present, guaranteeing further recognition and high regard for your clan. Finally, a humorous and imaginative gatekeeper system will infuriate your oppenents (isn't that always good?) and add points to your clan's status. Who's responsible for this thing? Professor Paul Viola is the head of the Learning and Vision Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. One of his graduate students, Jeff Norris, is writing his Master's thesis on face detection and recognition in office environments. He is responsible for the implementation of a system to control an automatic door in the space for the Learning and Vision Group. The door is also intended to be a foundation for further research by members of the AI Lab. The Gatekeeper Project is a step towards that goal, and it makes a great AI Olympics event, too. |
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For problems or questions, contact jnorris@ai.mit.edu.
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