Artificiel intelligence, ai08

The course gives a broad overview of the problems and methods studied in the field of artificial intelligence.

Please respect the code of honour.

Patric Jensfelt: Responsible and lecturer
Danica Kragic: Lecturer
Javier Romero: Course assistant

Aim| Literature| Examination| Lectures

Homeworks| Project| Help | Course evaluation

Aim of the course

After completing this course the student will be able to

analyse and solve problems involving various forms of search algorithms, including the design of heuristic functions to improve the efficiency of such solutions
formulate and process knowledge in propositional and first-order logic
formulate and solve problems with uncertain information using Bayesian approaches
explain the basics for communication between agents and work with grammars to parse and generate languages and compute models for probabilistic language processing
relate the material to some of the currently active research problems in computer vision and robotics
develop systems that utilize artificial intelligence.

Besides the purely technical aspects, the course also provides the student with

practical experience in working with problems both individually and in groups
experience in presenting results both in writing and orally
experience with project based work

Literature

The course literature is
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Second Edition) by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig, Prentice Hall (2003), ISBN 0-13790-395-2

The examnination consists of completing homeworks (individual) and a projects (in groups). Starting from 2007 all grades at KTH are goal oriented. This means that to receive a certain grade the student has to fulfill the requirements for that grade. To recieve a passing grade the student should show basic knowledge of the course material and be able answer specific questions for which an answers are given during the lectures or in the textbook. A passing grade also require the student to work in a group, write a report that presents the results and present the results orally and critally review another groups report. For higher grades the student must show ability to formalize and apply the knowledge on practilcal examples.

A grade A-F is given on the course.

Each homework assignment (INL1-3) and the project (PRO1) will be given a grade A-F
To pass the course all homework assignments and the project need to have a passing grade (A-E).
To receive the higest grade a student should show that all goals for all different parts of the course have been fulfilled at the level A. However, to increase the margin somewhat we use a system where the final grade is calculated as the mean grade on the results rounding to the closest grade down. That is, the partial results A B A A will result in the final grade A whereas A B B A will result in B.

For all examinations, we use the following code of honour..

Lectures

The official schedule for the lectures can be found here in text format and graphical format.

Lecture overview

The table below gives an overview of the lectures. The lecture notes will be posted in conjunction with the lecture. The exact content of each lecture is only tentative and may be adapted along the way.

NOTE: You are NOT allowed to print the notes at CSC (printing at home of course OK). They are here for your convenience and we trust you to honour your part of this by not printing them.

	Date	Content	Chptrs	Downloads
L1	1 Sep	Introduction and agent models	1-2	slides L1
L2	2 Sep	Search algorithms	3,4	slides L2
L3	3 Sep	CSP and Games	5,6	slides L3
L4	4 Sep	Logic	7,8	slides L4
L5	5 Sep	Inference in FOL and Know repr	9,10	slides L5
L6	9 Sep	Probabilistic reasoning I	13-15	slides L6
L7	11 Sep	Probabilistic reasoning II	13-15	slides L7
L8	12 Sep	Planning	11-12	slides L8
L9	15 Sep	Making decisions	16,17	slides L9 value_iteration.m
L10	16 Sep	Communication	22,23	slides L10
L11	9 Oct	Vision and robotics	24,25	slides L11 rob slides L11 vis
L12	16	Summary		slides L12 summary

Homework

Goals

This course gives a broad overview of the field of AI. The homeworks are intended to give the student a change to work with the material a bit more hands-on. To get the highest grade on the homework you will have to show that you can apply the knowledge in practice by solving some practical problems.

Homework assignment

There will be 3 homework assignments handed out during the course. The table below lists the dates when the homeworks will be available for download and when they are due. The homeworks should be handed in during the lectures or in the box label DD2380 at the ``Studentexpedition'' at Osquars Backe 2. The opening hours for the student office can be found here Homeworks that are not handed in in time will receive a penelty of -15 points.

You are allowed to work in pairs on the implementaton part of the homework but the parts before that should be solved individually.

The homework should be handed in in English. Homeworks handed in in other languages will not be graded. Please direct any questions about the homeworks and electronic handins to the course assistant Javier (jrgn AT csc.kth.se).

	Out date	Due date	Downloads
HW1	2/9 after class	16/9, 14:00	homework1.pdf
HW2	9/9 after class	23/9, 14:00	homework2.pdf
HW3	16/9 after class	30/9, 14:00	homework3.pdf , training.txt , testing.txt

Additional reading on HMMs.

Project

Goals

During the course you will learn about many things but as the scope is so broad you will not have time to focus so much. The project offers you that chance. It also gives you a chance to work in a group, write a report and make a presentation of your work at the end. For some students this could be an important rehearsal for the thesis work were you will be graded not only on the content of the thesis but also on the report, presentation as being able to critically assess the quality of someone elses work.

Type of projects

You are allowed to design your own project or to choose one of the predefined projects which are:

Written character recognition system (factor 3)
Minesweep agent (factor 3)
Tic-tac-toe (factor 1)

Defining your own project

In this case, you need to write a project proposal. It has to be clearly described what you will do and how it is related to the course material. An example of the proposal can be found in the next paragraph.

Written character recognition

Based on the proposal, you will implement a written character recognition system. For generating training data, you can use Scribble.java .

Minesweep agent

This has been the choice of most people before. The aim is to construct an agent that plays minesweep. More information about this project is available here.

Tic-tac-toe

Implement a program that allows you to play tic-tac-toe against the computer. This project is a lot simpler so you will not be able to get the highest grade on with this project (factor 1). A description can be found here .

You are also free to define your own project but you need to provide a detailed specification of what you plan to do and why.

Report

The project work has to be presented in a form of a report. Remember that this document is the main way in which your ideas for the project can be communicated in detail. The report should consist of the following:

a title page with your names and birth dates
a brief summary of your project and obtained results (Abstract)
a short introduction to the problem
a description of the relationship to the course material
a clear formalization of the problem using course material: which methods, how and why
a summary of your design approach and implementation
a serious analysis of your experimental results

You should remember that your report is the main method of communicating to the course instructors what you have accomplished and what methodology you have chosen to take. It is therefore very important that the report is well organized and well written.

The report should not be longer than 20 pages (excl any source code listings that you might include). The limit is to force you to express yourself in a concise manner. The report must be mailed to (patric@csc.kth.se) and be in pdf format. Along with the report you should also send in the source code in electronic format.

Presentations

Each presentation is give a slot of 30min. This includes 15min presentation and 10-15min of questions/discussion. Remember that the presentation is part of the grade on the project so please make an effort. A projector will be available for the presentations. A laptop will also be available so that you can bring a USB stick if you do not have your own laptop. Please send an email the day before if you want to use the laptop. The presentation will be in seminar room 22:an at Teknikringen 14 (same room as the help hours).

Opposition

In connection with the project presentation each group will be reviewed by another group. The opposing group should read the report and ask questions after the presentation. This opposition will be graded as well. Fill in the opposition protocol before the session and BRING 2 COPIES (filled in until the presentation part), one for the teacher and one for the other group so that they get some feedback on their work. This protocol is available in 3 different formats ( pdf , word and openoffice )

Grade on project

The grade for the project is calculated similar to the master thesis grade. The work itself, the report, the presentation and the opposition are all graded. Each of these gets grade 0 (fail) - 3 (excellent). Each part need to have at least grade 1 (pass) for the project to get a passing grade. The grade for the work itself is multiplied with up to a factor of 3 and the points are summed up.

E: 6-7
D: 8-9
C: 10-12
B: 13-15
A: 15-18

Groups

The project work should be carried out in groups of 4 people. You are free to form your own groups. People that have not formed groups by the deadline will be assigned groups. Send an email with information about your group to patric@kth.se with name, person number and email addresses to all members in the group along with information about wthat project you have choosen.

Important dates for project work

The table below lists some important dates for the project work

Date	Task
September 16, letcure	Form groups
September 16, letcure	Choose project, hand in specification (if you chose new project)
October 13	Project reports due

Help hours

If you have questions about projects, homework or the course material you can come ot the help hours