EEL 6938 - Engineering Applications of Autonomous Agents

Spring 2007

Course description

Autonomous operation is a major engineering requirement of many computer systems. Today's computers can outperform humans in executing computations, storing and searching enormous amounts of data or transferring data over various communication protocols. Yet the same computer systems have only limited ability to make decisions, pursue their own goals, assess their health level and other attributes of autonomous behavior.

Exploring the current state of the art of the research into the autonomous behavior of computer systems is the object of this class. As an advanced graduate level class, it will rely on literature in form of journal and conference papers, and requires the students to study and explore various topics on their own.

Instructor:	Dr. Lotzi Bölöni
Office:	ENGR 3 - 319
Phone:	407-823-2320
E-mail:	lboloni@eecs.ucf.edu
Web Site:	http://www.eecs.ucf.edu/~lboloni/Teaching/EEL6938_2007/index.html The assignments and the other announcements will be posted on the course web site
Classroom:	Eng I - 388
Class Hours:	Tuesday, Thursday 10:30 - 11:45
Office Hours:
Pre-requisites:	EEL 4781 (Computer Networks) or equivalent, EEL 4872 (Engineering Applications of Intelligent Systems) or equivalent.
Recommended readings:	As the course will explore research topics which are usually found in journal and conference papers, there is no required textbook for this course, but there is a number of reference books which the students should consider: M. Wooldridge: An Introduction To Multi-Agent Systems A. Omicini, F. Zambonelli, M. Klusch and R. Tolksdorf (eds): Coordination of Internet Agents J. Ferber: Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence.
FEEDS/Tegrity video stream:	TBD
Projects:	The class requires the students to prepare a major research project in one of the topics explored in the class. The project can be: -An implemented software project. -An extensive, critical survey of the literature related to a topic.
Grading:	Homework: 30% Project: 70 % Standard 90/80/70/60 scale will be used for final grades (curved if necessary)

Grades

Goto: Links, Syllabus, Grades

Class project

You have 2 choices for the class project.

Option 1: A programming project.
Option 2: Write a survey on a topic relevant to the class. This project does not involve programming, but requires a lot of (intelligent) reading.

Presentations

Syllabus

Date	Topic	Lecture Notes, Readings, Homeworks
Jan. 9	Introduction -what are agents, the topics to be covered
Jan. 11	-The knowledge level. -The view of classical AI towards agent building	Allen Newell: The Knowledge Level
Jan. 16	Behavioral agent models -Intelligence without representation	Rodney A. Brooks: Intelligence without representation
Jan. 18	-Brooks' subsumption architecture	Rodney A. Brooks: A robust layered control system for a mobile robot
Jan. 23	-Social potential fields	J.H. Reif and H. Wang: Social potential fields: A distributed behavioral control for autonomous robots
Jan. 25	-Controversies around behavioral approaches and situated cognition	Patrich Hayes, Kenneth Ford and Neil Agnew: On babies and bathwater: a cautionary tale Alonso Vera and Herbert Simon: Situated action: a symbolic interpretation William Clancey: Situated action: a neuropsychological interpretation. Response to Vera and Simon.
Jan. 30	Decision theoretic models -Probabilities -Reasoning with probabilities	[slides] Probabilities
Feb. 1	-Markov decision processes	[slides] Markov Decision Processes
Feb. 6	-Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) Lecture by Majid Ali Khan
Feb. 8	-Reinforcement learning	Shridhar Mahadevan and Jonathan Connell - Automatic Programming of Behavior Based Robots using Reinforcement Learning Maja Mataric - Reinforcement Learning in the Multi-Robot Domain
Feb. 13		Haili Song et al - Optimal Electricity Supply Bidding by Markov Decision Process
Feb. 15
Feb. 20	Belief, desire, intention (BDI) models -Short introduction to logic.	Homework 1 - due March 20th
Feb. 22		[slides] Modal logic
Feb. 27
Mar. 1
Mar. 6	Presentation: 2APL: A practical agent programming language (Cathy Yen)	[ slides ] 2APL
Mar. 8	Presentation: Golog, logic programming language for agents (David Mui)	[ slides ] Golog
Mar. 13	Spring break
Mar. 15	Spring break
Mar. 20	Project preparation discussions
Mar. 22	Presentation: Karl Sim: Evolving Virtual Creatures (Adelein Rodriguez)	[ slides ] Evolving virtual creatures
Mar. 27	Presentation: Steering behaviors in Flocking (Kevin Kelly)	[ slides ] Steering behaviors
Mar. 29	Presentation: Affective computing (Victor Hung)	[ slides ] Affective computing
Apr. 3	Class cancelled. I recommend you to go to the AI faculty and student meeting with Marvin Minsky in Harris Center 202 (10am-12am).	Homework 2 - due April 29th
Apr. 5	Presentation: Helbing et al - Simulating dynamical features of escape panic (Alex Turek)	[ slides ] Simulating escape panic
Apr. 10	Presentation: Yoav Shoham - Agent Oriented Programming (Lucas Schroeder)	[ slides ] Agent Oriented Programming
Apr. 12	Presentation: Parsons et al - Agents that Reason and Negotiate by Arguing (Malachi Lawson)
Apr. 17	Presentation: Service Oriented Architectures (Benjamin Snively)	[ slides ] Service oriented programming
Apr. 19	Presentation: Managing Social Influences through Argumentation-Based Negotiation (Yi Luo)	[ slides ] Managing social influences
Apr. 29	Projects due

Instructive readings, reflections on research and graduate studies etc

Grades:

Homework 1 grades