CS470/570
Aritificial Intelligence

Spring 2008
Syllabus

Note: This syllabus is only a rough plan for the course. We will generally cover the topics in the order listed, but not always in the given amount of time.

I will add material as the course progresses and correct dates if we get too far ahead or behind. Thus, it is a good idea to recheck this page from time to time.

WeekDatesTopicChaptersComments
1 1/9 - 1/11 Introduction to Aritificial Intelligence Chapter 1 What is AI? A very brief history of AI. A few general AI sites on the web: Stuart Russell's AI listings, Open Directory's AI listings.
Some Eliza programs: Eliza, another Eliza.
The Loebner Prize an on-going Turing Test contest, you might also want to look at Marvin Minsky's objections to the contest.
2 1/14 - 1/18 Intelligent Agents, Simple Search Chapter 2, Chapter 3 Ch 2: agents, environments and goals, agent types; Ch 3: simple search (breadth first, depth first, uniform cost, depth limited, iterative deepening, bidirectional), search strategy evaluation (completeness, optimality, time and space complexity), searching with partial information.
3 1/21 - 1/25 Heuristics and Searches Chapter 4 Project 1 Subproject 1 No class on Monday, Jan. 21.
Informed search and heurisitics, greedy search, A* search, memory bounded search, heurisitic functions, optimization, and continious search spaces. Here is an applet that solves the 8-puzzle using A* search. You can also try solving the 8-puzzle yourself here.
4 1/28 - 2/1 Local Search and Constraint Satisfaction Problems Chapter 5 The deadline for subproject 1 has been extended until Monday Feb. 4th. No class Monday or Wednesay (instructor illness). Local and on-line search: greedy, simulated annealing, beam, and GAs. CSP and CSP heuristics.
5 2/4 - 2/8 Local Search and Constraint Satisfaction Problems Chapter 5 Matt Settles' PSO summary CSP and CSP heuristics.
6 2/11 - 2/15 More CSP and Adversarial Search Chapter 6 Games, alpha-beta pruning,
    Maps for project 1:
  • map1 Simple map to visualize search patterns
  • map2 Simple obstacle to show how different searches handle obstacles.
  • map3 complex map.
  • map4 Larger map for comparing search efficiency.
7 2/18 - 2/22 More adversarial Search Chapter 6 No class Monday.
Project 2
Subproject 2a
Games, alpha-beta pruning, games of chance, multi-player games, Deep Blue
8 2/25 - 2/29 More adversarial Search Chapter 6 First midterm Feb 29th
Games, alpha-beta pruning, games of chance, multi-player games.
9 3/3 - 3/7 Logical Agents Chapter 7 No class Friday March 7th
Propositional logic.
10 3/10 - 3/14 Spring Break Spring Break Spring Break
11 3/24 - 3/28 Logical Agents Chapter 7 Project3 , Subproject for Project3 , Prolog notes , Simple logical agents, propositional logic, beginning Prolog Guest lecture by Dr. Robert Heckendorn on Monday. No class Wednesday or Friday.
12 3/31 - 4/4 Logical Agents Chapter 8 and 9 2nd Exam on Friday. 1st order logic, inferencing in 1st order logic. Guest lecture by Dr. Robert Heckendorn on Monday.
13 4/7 - 4/11 Logical Agents Chapter 8 and 9 More Prolog 1st order logic, inferencing in 1st order logic.
14 4/14 - 4/18 Logical Agents and Fuzzy Logic Chapter 8 and 9 Project4 , Subproject for Project 4 , Grad Project , Finising up 1st order logic. Fuzzy logic, fuzzy sets, fuzzy controllers, defuzzification.

Occasionally we will discuss papers and topics not directly covered in the text.