Visitors from around the world arrived in Austin this week for a Jan. 25-30 conference on artificial intelligence.

The conference for the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, or AAAI, features various guest speakers, games, demonstrations and researchers who present their work. A Jan. 27 open house allowed attendees to interact with innovators in the artificial intelligence, or AI, field.

Unmanned aircrafts, also known as drones, continue to gain public interest because of their ability to respond during emergency or disaster situations. Some drones are even being used in such situations at the city level to assist on public-safety matters. Texas A&M University, which participated at the AAAI conference, has invested inusing and studying the unmanned aircrafts.

Drones can aid in search missions, said Grant Wilde, a Texas A&M master's student. The mission is not to replace humans with drones, he said, but to help humans do a better job. These same drones are being researched to see what role they can play in assisting local Texas fire departments.

During the Jan. 26 open house, researchers also enabled self-operating robots to playa game of soccer dubbed "RoboCup." The robots, obtained by students at The University of Texas, University of Pennsylvania and University of New South Wales, were programmed by students to respond to various situations while on the soccer field. The ultimate goal of the project is to create robots capable of playing a humanWorld Cup team by 2050, said Dickens He, a University of Pennsylvania student whose robot competed in RoboCup.

In addition, researchers presented poster projects and demonstrations during the open house. One notable group is working on a wheelchair that can be steered using one's mind.