AI Developed by ETH Zurich Surpasses Human Record in Labyrinth Maze Game

In a groundbreaking achievement, researchers at ETH Zurich have pioneered an artificial intelligence system that has outperformed humans in a classic game called Labyrinth Maze. The machine shattered the world record previously held by Swedish player Lars Goran Danielsson, who completed the maze in 15.41 seconds, by accomplishing the game in a mere 14.48 seconds.

The Labyrinth Maze game involves maneuvering a marble through a maze from start to finish using two buttons, aiming to prevent the marble from falling into holes along the path.

The remarkable feat was achieved by a robot named Cyber Runner, which learns through experience. Equipped with a camera that observes the game, an algorithm embedded within the system progressively learns with each attempt.

During the study, researchers provided both Cyber Runner and several human participants approximately six hours of practice with the game. Astonishingly, while humans exhibited challenges in meeting the maze’s objectives after this duration, the robot swiftly mastered the game in mere seconds.

The machine’s adeptness in the game became so advanced that it managed to utilize unintended shortcuts. Consequently, the team occasionally intervened to instruct the AI to follow the correct path within the labyrinth. A video demonstrates the AI in action, showcasing its prowess at playing the game.

Motivated by the pursuit of rapid learning in physical environments, the study outlines the development and training of a robotic system designed to navigate and solve a maze game using reinforcement learning techniques.

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“The method involves extracting observations from camera images, providing valuable information about the labyrinth’s layout. Additionally, we explored the system’s symmetries to enhance training data. Consequently, our approach successfully learned to solve the popular game with only 5 hours of real-world training data,” stated the researchers.

This accomplishment adds to a series of AI achievements in gaming, such as Meta’s AI surpassing humans in strategic board games and DeepMind’s AI triumphing over the world’s top Combat players. The groundbreaking progress achieved by ETH Zurich’s Cyber Runner highlights the rapid advancements of artificial intelligence in mastering complex tasks and challenges traditionally reserved for human capabilities.