Youichiro Miyake
(SQUARE ENIX)
“The History of Game AI in Japan”
Bio:
Youichiro Miyake has been developing game titles while researching game AI technologies as lead AI researcher in SQUARE ENIX in these 10 years. He has developed and designed AI for many game titles.
– AI Technical Advisor, “FINAL FANTASY XIV”
– Lead AI Architect, “FINAL FANTASY XV”
– AI Technical Director, “KINGDOM HEARTS III”
– QA Automation AI Technical Advisor, “FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE”
– Visiting Researcher, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo (October 2018 to present)
– Visiting Professor, Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University (April 2019 to present)
– Specially Appointed Professor, Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence and Science, Rikkyo University (April 2020 to present)
– Chair of SIG-AI in Japan Chapter, International Game Developers Association (IGDA Japan)
– Director, Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) JAPAN
– Director, The Society for Art and Science
Eleni Stroulia
PhD, Computing Science Professor at the University of Alberta
“Games for Cognitive Health and Improved Mobility”
Abstract:
Mobility and cognition decline, associated with aging and illness, are the two most common, intertwined complexities faced by older adults. Games, in a variety of forms and technologies, offer an engaging method for older adults to exercise their cognitive and physical abilities. VibrantMinds and VirtualGym are two parallel projects that my team has been pursuing to investigate this hypothesis.
VibrantMinds offers a number of well known entertaining games, designed to challenge a person’s perception, attention, language and visual processing, and memory. Intentionally designed to become systematically more difficult over time, the users’ performance on them provides an indicator of their cognitive skills. At the same time, gameplay can be highly engaging and exercises and may potentially improve these skills.
VirtualGym is an exergames platform, offering a 2D and an immersive VR experience. The user is guided through exercises routines, modelled by exercise specialists in a special-purpose language, and demonstrated by a coach avatar in the former case, and implemented in game mechanics to which the user has to respond through movement in the latter case. VirtualGym exercise routines are adjustable to the user’s mobility and, at the same time, challenging.
In this presentation, we will discuss the two systems, the key premises underlying their design, and some initial findings from our studies.
Bio:
Dr. Eleni Stroulia is a Professor in the Department of Computing Science, at the University of Alberta. From 2011-2016, she held the NSERC/AITF Industrial Research Chair on Service Systems Management, with IBM. Her research focuses on addressing industry-driven problems, adopting AI and machine-learning methods to improve or automate tasks. Her flagship project in the area of health care is the Smart Condo in which she investigates the use of technology to support people with chronic conditions live independently longer and to educate health-science students to provide better care for these clients. In 2011, the Smart-Condo team received the UofA Teaching Unit Award. She has played leadership roles in the GRAND and AGE-WELL Networks of Centres of Excellence. in 2018 she received a McCalla professorship, and in 2019 she was recognized with a Killam Award for Excellence in Mentoring. She has supervised more than 60 graduate students and PDFs, who have gone forward to stellar academic and industrial careers. Since 2020, she is the Director of the University of Alberta’s AI4Society Signature Area, and since 2021, she serves as the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science.