Ethical Guidelines

University of Illinois trained engineers are the best and most highly sought in the world. Our graduates are superbly trained, highly competent, and creative. This, however, is not enough. Our engineers must also be trusted to conduct themselves according to the highest ethical standards. All teams must address ethical considerations in their projects. This requirement has two parts.

First, there is a stringent Code of Ethics published by professional societies, such as IEEE and ACM. The power of these Codes of Ethics is to provide guidance to engineers in decision making and to lend the weight of the collective community of engineers to individuals taking a stand on ethical issues. Thus the Code of Ethics both limits the professional engineer and empowers the professional engineer to stand firm on fundamental ethical bedrock. All teams must read the IEEE code and ACM code and comment on any sections of the code that bear directly on the project.

Second, we expect our students to have personal standards of conduct consistent with the IEEE and ACM Codes of Ethics, but also beyond it. That is, there are areas of ethics not addressed by these Codes that the engineer may consider in taking on projects or jobs or making other professional decisions. These are personal standards and choices. In the context of the class, there are no right or wrong answers here. Our students simply need to demonstrate that they are thinking deeply about their own decisions and the consequences of those decisions. We encourage our students to consider the wider impact of their projects and address any concerns raised by potential uses of the project. Students should ask themselves, "Would I be comfortable having my name widely attached to this project? Do I want to live in a society where this product is available or widely used? Would I be proud of a career dominated by the decision making demonstrated here?" Remember that UIUC engineers have a long history of inventions that really has changed the world.

If the students feel that these Codes of Ethics does not directly bear on their project and that there are no other reasonable concerns, they should not invent issues where there are none. Students will still be expected to be familiar with the IEEE Code of Ethics and ACM Code of Ethics.

Intelligent Texas Hold 'Em Robot

Xuming Chen, Jingshu Li, Yiwei Wang, Tong Xu

Featured Project

## Problem

Due to the severe pandemic of COVID-19, people around the world have to keep a safe social distance and to avoid big parties. As one of famous Poker games in the western world, the Texas Hold’em is also influenced by the pandemic and tends to turn to online game platform, which, unfortunately, brings much less real excites and fun to its players. We hope to develop a product to assist Poker players to get rid of the limit of time and space, trying to let them enjoy card games just as before the pandemic.

## Solution Overview

Our solution is to develop an Intelligent Texas Hold’em robot, which can make decisions in real Texas poker games. The robot is expected to play as an independent real player and make decisions in game. It means the robot should be capable of getting the information of public cards and hole cards and making the best possible decisions for betting to get as many chips as possible.

## Solution Components

-A Decision Model Based on Multilayer Neural Network

-A Texas Hold'em simulation model which based on traditional probabilistic models used for generating training data which are used for training the decision model

-A module of computer vision enabling game AI to recognize different faces and suits of cards and to identify the game situation on the table.

-A manipulation robot hand which is able to pick, hold and rotate cards.

-Several Cameras helping to movement of robot hand and the location of cards.

## Criterion for Success

- Training a decision model for betting using deep learning techniques (mainly reinforcement learning).

- Using cv technology to transform the information of public cards and hole cards and the chips of other players to valid input to the decision-making model.

- Using speech recognition technology to recognize other players’ actions for betting as valid input to the decision model.

Using the PTZ to realize the movement of the cameras which are used to capture the information of pokers and chips.

- Finish the mechanical design of an interactive robot, which includes actions like draw cards, move cards to camera, move chips and so on. Utilize MCU to control the robot.

Project Videos