Profile

Patrick received his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Texas at Austin where he was advised by Peter Stone. Patrick received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University. Patrick's research spans the areas of autonomous multiagent systems, robotics, and machine learning with an emphasis on reinforcement learning. As part of his research, Patrick has served as the team leader of the robot soccer UT Austin Villa RoboCup 3D Simulation League team, and has contributed to the team winning the RoboCup 3D Simulation League world championship nine times. Prior to joining Sony, Patrick was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research.

Message

“My research focus spans across the areas of autonomous multiagent systems, robotics, and machine learning. In particular I'm interested in using reinforcement learning to develop intelligent autonomous agents that are robust to changes in their environments and can adapt to new surroundings. I'm excited to be developing and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to solve interesting hard real world problems at Sony!”

Publications

Outracing Champion Gran Turismo Drivers with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Nature, 2022
Pete Wurman, Samuel Barrett, Kenta Kawamoto, James MacGlashan, Kaushik Subramanian, Thomas Walsh, Roberto Capobianco, Alisa Devlic, Franziska Eckert, Florian Fuchs, Leilani Gilpin, Piyush Khandelwal, Varun Kompella, Hao Chih Lin, Patrick MacAlpine, Declan Oller, Takuma Seno, Craig Sherstan, Michael D. Thomure, Houmehr Aghabozorgi, Leon Barrett, Rory Douglas, Dion Whitehead Amago, Peter Dürr, Peter Stone, Michael Spranger, Hiroaki Kitano

Many potential applications of artificial intelligence involve making real-time decisions in physical systems while interacting with humans. Automobile racing represents an extreme example of these conditions; drivers must execute complex tactical manoeuvres to pass or block…

Blog

January 11, 2024 | GT Sophy | Game AI

From Hypothesis to Reality: The GT Sophy Team Explains the Evolution of the Breakthrough AI Agent

Since its inception in 2020, Sony AI has been committed to enhancing human imagination and creativity through the acceleration of AI research and development. One of the first examples of this work can be found within the organiza…

Since its inception in 2020, Sony AI has been committed to enhancing human imagination and creativity through the acceleration of …

September 15, 2022 | GT Sophy | Game AI

Don’t Cross That Line! How Our AI Agent Learned Sportsmanship

GT SOPHY TECHNICAL SERIES　Starting in 2020, the research and engineering team at Sony AI set out to do something that had never been done before: create an AI agent that could beat the best drivers in the world at the PlayStation®…

GT SOPHY TECHNICAL SERIES　Starting in 2020, the research and engineering team at Sony AI set out to do something that had never be…