General Information

Instructor: Deepak Kumar, 248 Park Hall, 526-7485
E-Mail: dkumar@cs.brynmawr.edu
WWW: http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dkumar

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:30 p.m. to 4:00.m.
Room: Park 338
Robot Building Lab: TBA in Room Park 230

Laboratories:

• The Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Lab (Park 230)
• Computer Science Lab Room 231 (Science Building)

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Texts & Software

• Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis, by Nils Nilsson, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1998.
• Course Wiki

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Important Dates

August 31: First lecture
October 5: Exam 1
November 18: Exam 2
December 9: Last lecture/Exam 3

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Assignments

1. Homework(Due Thursday 9/2): Write a short essay on the predictions made in the film, and the various issues portrayed. In your own opinion, how far has AI come in the last 45 years?
2. Homework(Due Monday 9/6): Write a short essay on your thoughts about the course from what went on in class in Week 1 and the readings. Can you find an additional example of a recent AI application? Post it on the wiki.
3. Homework (Due Monday, September 13): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week2).
4. Robot Exercise#1: (Due on Tuesday, September 21): Click here for details.
5. Homework (Due Monday, September 20): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week3).
6. Homework (Due Monday, September 27): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week4).
7. Homework (Due Monday, October 18): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week5&6).
8. Homework (Due Monday, October 25): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week8).
9. Homework (Due Monday, November 1): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week9).
10. Homework (Due Monday, November 8): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week10).
11. Homework (Due Monday, November 15): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week11).
12. Homework (Due Monday, November 22): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week12).
13. Homework (Due Monday, November 29): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week13).
14. Homework (Due Monday, December 6): Write a short response on this week's class, readings, and the course and post it on the course wiki (Week14).

Responses

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week5&6 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14

Robot Laboratory Handouts/Assignmments

Robot Exercise#1: (Due on Tuesday, September 21): Click here for details.
Robot Exercise#2: (Due on Tuesday, September 28): Click here for details.
Exercise#3 (Due on Thursday, October 7): Click here for details.
Exercise#4 (Due on Thursday, October 28): Click here for details.
Exercise#5 (Due on Tuesday, November 23): Click here for details.
Exercise#6 (Due on Thursday, December 9): Final Project: ideas presented and discussed in class.

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Lectures

• Week 1 (August 31, September 2)
  August 31: Course Introduction. Today we will watch the movie: The Thinking Machine (Carousel Films, 1961).
  Homework: Write a short essay on the predictions made in the film, and the various issues portrayed. In your own opinion, how far has AI come in the last 45 years?
  
  September 2: Introduction to AI. Some examples of AI. Grading student essays.
  
  Read: Chapter 1 from Nilsson. Also, Stu Shapiro's entry on Artificial Intelligence in the Encyclopedia of AI.
  
  Homework (Due Monday 9/6): Write a short essay on your thoughts about the course from what went on in class in Week 1 and the readings. Can you find an additional example of a recent AI application? Post it on the wiki.
  

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• Week 2 (September 7, 9)
  September 7: Intelligent Agents. Agents & Environments. Agent Design Principlies. Types of agent architectures.
  
  September 9: Stimulous Response Agents. Grid World Robot. Writing wall following behavious for Grid World robot. Boolean functions and Threshold Logic Units. Some real robots: The Handyboard, Khepera, Hemisson.
  
  Read: Chapter 2 from Nilsson. Read Python Introduction to start learning Python. Start reading Introduction to Pyro.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, September 13): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week2).
  

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• Week 3 (September 14, 16)
  September 14: Introduction to Pyro. Implementing S-R Agents in Pyro.
  
  Read: Chapter 3 from Nillson (skim the math).
  
  Robot Exercise#1: (Due on Tuesday, September 21): Click here for details.
  
  September 16: Learning in S-R Agents using Neural Networks. Computational model of a basic neuron, learning rules. Backpropagation Networks. Designing S-R Agents using neural networks. Other biologically inspired models: Evolutionary Computation, Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming. Evolving Neural Networks using GA's.
  
  Read: Chapters 3 & 4 from Nilsson.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, September 20): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week3).

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• Week 4 (September 21, 23)
  September 21: Demo Day! Bump-N-Grind demos and discussion. NETtalk demo. Genetic Algorithm Demos.
  
  Robot Exercise#2: (Due on Tuesday, September 28): Click here for details.
  
  September 23: Model and Goal-based agents. State spaces and searching: Blind searches (depth-first, breadth-first, non-deterministic, iterative deepening), heuristic searches (hill climbing, best-first), optimal searches (uniform cost).
  
  Read: Chapters 7 and 8 from Nilsson.
  Homework (Due Monday, September 27): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week4).
  

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• Week 5 (September 28, 30)
  September 28: Demos of RangerBot. Robot Exercise: BUilding a robot out of human parts (a kinesthetic exercise). Implementing searches in Python. The A* algorithm.
  
  Read: Chapter 9 from Nilsson.
  Exercise#3 (Due on Thursday, October 7): Click here for details.
  
  September 30: A* Search. Searches in Robot Navigation. Configuration spaces.
  
  

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• Week 6 (October 5, 7)
  October 5: Exam 1 is today.
  October 7: Exam Review. Adversarial Search.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, October 18): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week5&6).
  
  Enjoy your Fall Break!
  

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• Week 7 (October 12, 14)
  No classes, Fall Break!!

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• Week 8 (October 19, 21)
  October 19: Minimax Procedure for adversarial search. Writing a game playing program that uses Minimax. Improving Minimax by Alpha-Beta pruning.
  
  Read: Chapter 12 from Nilsson.
  
  Exercise#4 (Due on Thursday, October 28): Click here for details.
  
  October 21: Alpha-beta pruning.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, October 25): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week8).
  

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• Week 9 (October 26, 28)
  October 26: Logic-based agents. Logic, propositional calculus: syntax, inference rules, semantics.
  
  Read: Chapter 13 from Nilsson.
  
  Talk: Raymond Smullyan, Indiana University. Wednesday, October 27 from 8:00p (Tea at 7:45p) he will give a talk titled, Satan, Cantor & Infinity in Stokes Auditorium (Haverford College). Thursday, October 28 from 4:15p (Tea at 4:00p) he will give a talk titled, Coercive Logic and Other Things in Hilles 109 (Haverford College)
  
  October 28: Propositional Calculus, contd. Sematics: Truth tables, satisfiability, validity, equivalence, entailment. Rules of inference, soundness & completeness. Metatheorems: deduction theorem and reductio ad absurdum. Resolution rule of inference. Resolution refutation.
  
  Read: Chapter 14 from Nilsson.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, November 1): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week9).
  Exercise#5 (Due on Tuesday, November 23): Click here for details.
  

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• Week 10 (November 2, 4)
  November 2:Election Day. Since many of you are volunteering at the polls we will not have a formal class. I will be available during class time for office hours.
  
  November 4: Resolution in Propositional Calculus. Converting wffs into clauses.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, November 8): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week10).
  

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• Week 11 (November 9, 11)
  November 9: First-Order Predicate Calculus: language, semantics, and rules of inference.
  
  Read: Chapter 15 from Nilsson.
  
  November 11: Inference in Predicate Calculus. Unification. Resolution and modus ponens. Forward and backward chaining. Building Knowledge-based Agents. Demo of SNePSLog. Final project ideas.
  
  Read: Chapters 16 & 17 from Nilsson.
  Homework (Due Monday, November 15): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week11).
  
  

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• Week 12 (November 16, 18)
  November 16: Other knowledge representation schemes: commonsense knowledge, semantic networks.
  
  Read: Chapter 18 from Nilsson.
  
  November 18: Exam 2 is today.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, November 22): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week12).
  

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• Week 13 (November 23, 25)
  November 23: Exercise#5 is due today. Konane Tournament. Good tournament! The final is all set between Ben Root's program and Ioana Butoi's program for tuesday, November 30.
  
  November 25: No class. Happy Thanksgiving!!
  
  Homework (Due Monday, November 29): Write a short response on this week's class and readings and post it on the course wiki (Week13).
  

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• Week 14 (November 30, December 2)
  November 30: Konane Final. Introduction to Natural Language Processing: Grammars, parsing, logical form.
  
  Read: Chapters 2 & 3 from the class handouts.
  
  December 2: Top-down parsing using RTN's. Creating a lexicon. Recording sentence structure.
  
  Homework (Due Monday, December 6): Write a short response on this week's class, readings, and the course and post it on the course wiki (Week14).
  

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• Week 15 (December 7, 9)
  December 7: ATN's. Demos of several NLP systems. Course Wrap up!
  
  Read: Chapter 4 from class handout.
  
  December 9: Exam 3 is today. Final project Demos/presentations are today!
  

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Grading

All graded work will receive a grade, 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7, 2.3, 2.0, 1.7, 1.3, 1.0, or 0.0. At the end of the semester, final grades will be calculated as a weighted average of all grades according to the following weights:

Exam 1: 15%
Exam 2: 15%
Exam 3: 15%
Labs: 45%
Written Work: 10%
Total: 100%

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Links

An Overview of AI (from AAAI's web pages)

Created by dkumar@cs.brynmawr.edu on August19, 2004.