CS3500.01 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Fall 2009)


  • Office: Memorial 215 (X2534, zshen@mail, http://oz.plymouth.edu/~zshen)
  • Office Hour: M: 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m., 2:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.; W, F: 10:00-11:00 a.m., and whenever my door is open

    General Information:

    With Artificial Intelligence, we are trying to understand, as well as build, intelligent entities. AI has produced many interesting and important results. E.g., on May 11, 1997, an IBM program, Deep Blue beat the reigning world class champion. Although hard to predict in the details, it is clear that computers coupled with human-level intelligence will have a huge impact on our lives. With AI, we want to know how it is possible for a tiny, slow brain to perceive, understand, predict, and then manipulate the world, which is much larger and complicated than itself. Far more difficultly, if we understand this process, how could we make something with these features?

    We will start with one of the often used AI languages, Prolog, then use Prolog as a tool to explore several AI domains, including knowledge representation, various search mechanisms, expert systems, planning, machine learning, natural language processing, compute based game planning. Finally, we will study some basic robotics as an example as constructing something that possess certain intelligent features.

    Students are strongly advised to attend every class. For those who would like to review my class notes, a set of those notes is included within my WEB based syllabus for this course.

    Anything and everything handed in for this course, including those for homework and lab assignment, has to be done by the signed individual. If enough evidence shows that someone is involved with ``cheating'', the case(s) will be immediately reported to the Chair of the Computer Science Department. For a more detailed and specific description of University's policy on Academic Integrity, please refer to the relevant section(s) in the most recent Academic Catalog.

    The instructor will try his utmost to be fair in grading students' work. On the other hand, if a student believes that s/he is not given a fair grade, s/he should follow the procedure as specified in the University Fairgrading Policy to appeal the grade.


    Textbooks

    1. (required) Bratck, I., Prolog: Programming for Artificial Intelligence (Third Ed.), Addison-Wesley, 2001.
    2. (required but free) SWI-Prolog and its reference manual.
    3. (optional) Levy, D., Robots unlimited: life in a virtual age, A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA2006.
    4. Shen, Z., A Gentler Introduction to Mindstorm NXT Programming, Fall 2009.

    Topics

    1. An introduction to AI
    2. Prolog Programming
      1. Introduction
      2. Syntax and semantics: What does it look like and what does it mean?
      3. Lists, operators, and arithmetic: What do we play with?
      4. Using structure: Prolog is really useful.
      5. Controlling backtracking: Something C++ doesn't have
      6. (Self Study) Input and output.
      7. More built-in predicates: Something free.
      8. Programming style and technique: We will only talk about the efficiency stuff.
      9. Data structures: Some more serious applications.
    3. AI
      1. Basic problem solving strategies: how should we represent a problem and look for a solution for it?
      2. Best-first search: How could we get a solution faster?
      3. Knowledge representation and expert system: A machine based expert.
      4. Planning: Do you have a plan to do it?
      5. Machine learning: How does computer learn stuff?
      6. Game planning: How did a computer beat that world Chess champion?
    4. Robotics

    Evaluation

    1. Homework as given in the lecture notes (25%)
    2. Midterm Test (20%)
    3. Prolog projects as specified in the Prolog project page (20%)
    4. Robotics labworks (25%)
    5. A Robot project as specified in the Robot project proposals (10%) and will be presented during the final time, between 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., Monday, December 17, 2007.
    Your final grade can be found here.