The Origin of “FruitPunch AI” - the name, the game, the fame

In the summer of 2018 my friends from the TU/e and I were looking for the next step in our academic career and wanted to know more about artificial intelligence (AI). We wanted to join an initiative that got together around the application of this new technology, but found no such thing in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. So we set our minds on starting it ourselves. But how were we going to engage students in this field and get a new generation of AI engineers to rise up? 

With this question in the back of our minds we went to the finals of the RoboCup with TechUnited. When everyone was coding, clanging away on their keyboards, the people that took care of the internet for this huge event came over to us to offer some fruit punch. We accepted and started to talk with them over a bowl of fruit punch. They turned out to organize these big esports events with over 40.000 attendees!

Games are the perfect environment to learn how to apply and research AI in! Safe, fast and adaptable.

We’d been aware of esports, competitive multiplayer gaming, but not that it was this big, with finals of competitions being attended by hundreds of thousands of fans. So we were talking about artificial intelligence and about esports at this big worldwide robotics competition, and then it struck us. An AI esports competition! This is the perfect way to engage students because esports is big business, ourselves and all of our peers played video games. Next to that, games are the perfect environment to learn how to apply AI ánd to research AI! Because the field of AI has a rich history of application and research in, you guessed it, games! It all started with an AI beating Gary Kasparov, the chess grandmaster, in a game of chess. Today the world's leading AI research institutes are using the platform of competitive multiplayer games to research AI. Think Google Deepmind beating the best StarCraft 2 players or OpenAI beating  the world’s best Dota 2 players. And thus started the idea of the FruitPunch AI esports Competition.

Games as a platform of innovation

The environment of games is so relevant because games are always a simulation of some aspect of reality, meaning that you can learn your AI certain skills in a safe environment. Next to that, simulation is increasingly used in industry because it’s not only safer that real world testing, it’s also faster, cheaper and more adaptable. This makes that a competition in this field teaches engineering students AI in a low risk, low barrier to entrance environment with a very short bridge towards real world application, since the physics engines of games are nowadays literally used to simulate advanced models of mechanical, electronic and (bio)chemical systems. Gaming is one of those fields that quietly bring innovation to a lot of other fields, as do aerospace engineering and the military. A lot of tech is developed to bring the most realistic games to consumers. The graphical cards once developed to render Crisis 2 from NVIDIA are now running neural networks that detect cancer in medical images and the 3D environments made for Grand Theft Auto 5 are used to further develop self-driving cars. A fruitful platform for AI innovation, I would say!

A game is always a simulation of some aspect of reality, and with modern engines you can simulate anything!

The fruits of our labour

FruitPunch AI was born and we set out to organize an AI esports competition and an AI community with a vision of applying artificial intelligence to the technical domains. September 2018 we started out with the idea and in December the foundation was launched with the first FruitPunch AI Connect.

Now, 8 months later, we’ve organized a total of 13 events, a pilot competition, our team has grown from 2 to 20 people, our community from 0 to over 360 active, offline participants, we’re officially accredited as student team by the TU/e, have been featured in national news and we’ve gotten over 100.000 euros in funding to take the next steps and grow to an international community and competition to raise a generation of AI capable engineers. 

The spirits are high in the team. We’re working hard on the game for the AI esports competition and the community platform for the next academic year. I am incredibly proud of the team and what we’ve been able to achieve in such a short timespan (although it feels like years). It’s amazing to see everyone grow in their role and responsibilities and I trust we are going to have an amazing year of FruitPunch AI. Because we build a community and competition with a vision of AI for Good and who doesn’t want to contribute to that! 

Stay tuned, details are coming. Have a fruitful summer and keep it fresh. 

FruitPuncher in Chief, Buster Franken