Mario AI built with Machine Learning - Learned Wall Jump

[keyinregulus3]

How did it "learn to wall jump?" Didn't it already know when it landed against the wall that it could jump to get away? A human would learn it could wall jump just by desperately hitting buttons on the control pad and figuring it out once when he didn't die.

[HartsookK]

@keyinregulus3 Hi regulus, thanks for your interest. I use the phrase "learned" because I never directly gave my Mario the knowledge of wall jumping. It learned that behavior by watching other Marios play the game and recognizing that pressing jump when next to a pit wall is a common tactic. The type of learning you describe for humans is similar to what is called reinforcement learning (trying different tactics to improve), while learning by observation is called supervised learning.