But now, for the first time, the pudgy Italian plumber from the Mushroom Kingdom has been given a mind of his own.
 A team of cognitive modelling researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany have developed an artificial intelligence system that allows Mario to learn about his environment, experience emotions and respond to voice commands.
 In a video created to demonstrate the their work, the researchers show how Mario can describe his 'feelings' and act accordingly.
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 Mario can calculate how many moves he needs to make to reach a certain position, and also learn that jumping on a Goomba (one of his mushroom-shaped enemies) will destroy it.
 Related Articles 19 Jan 2015 17 Jan 2015 18 Jan 2015 13 Jan 2015 The Mario AI project is part of an annual competition run by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence – the aim of which is to document advances in artificial intelligence.
 The full list if entrants can be found here.