Robert William Nero, 1922–2023

William Robert Ackland

Robert William Briggs (1911-1983)

Briggs was born 10 December 1911 in Watertown, Massachusetts. He was raised by his grandparents, as both his mother and brother died of tuberculosis before Briggs was two years old. He lived with his grandparents until 1929 when he left for college. Briggs described his aunt's lessons on the family piano as one of his most lasting boyhood experiences. Even though he would eventually stop playin...

The NERO Video Game

In the NeuroEvolving Robotic Operatives (NERO) game, the player trains a team of virtual robots for combat against other players’ teams. The virtual robots learn in real time through interacting with the player. Since NERO was originally released in June, 2005, it has been downloaded over 50,000 times, appeared on Slashdot, and won several honors. A significant update was released in November, ...

The contribution of Robert William Kerwin (1955-2007) to psychiatry in Brazil.

A contribuição de Robert William Kerwin (1955-2007) para a Psiquiatria brasileira Recently, the world scientific community and particularly our Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria (Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry) had a great loss: Professor Robert W. Kerwin, from Great Britain. Robert Kerwin’s career was full of singularities and brilliance. In 1979, he started his studies toward a PhD degree at...

The NERO Real-time Video Game

In most modern video games, character behavior is scripted; no matter how many times the player exploits a weakness, that weakness is never repaired. Yet if game characters could learn through interacting with the player, behavior could improve as the game is played, keeping it interesting. This paper introduces the real-time NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (rtNEAT) method for evolving ...