02 October 2011
Milestone Week 2 Feedback Posted
07/10/11 18:14 Filed in: 480
I’ve posted the feedback for the Week 2 Milestone documents on the TRAC wikis for the respective projects. I’ve added a PDF file as an attachment to the Milestone Week 2 document (or whichever document contains the respective information). Most teams should revise their documents.
Let me know if you want me to re-evaluate your document, and point out the main changes you’ve made. Of course we can also discuss this during the lab time.
Let me know if you want me to re-evaluate your document, and point out the main changes you’ve made. Of course we can also discuss this during the lab time.
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Lab 4 Available
06/10/11 14:19 Filed in: 480
Lab 4 (AI Characters in movies or TV) is now available. After the more coding-intensive work on Lab 3, this one is more along the lines of the Chatbot assignment from the first week.
A 1 Available
06/10/11 14:12 Filed in: 480
I’ve made the first assignment available; it is a continuation of the lab with the search algorithms, expanding it to the uniform-cost, greedy, and A* algorithms.
A 3 Available
06/10/11 14:12 Filed in: 480
Although it’s not due for a while, I’ve also published the description of the third assignment. The assignment offers several options, including competitions (Robocode, Prisoner’s Dilemma, investigation of alternative environments). If you want to design an agent that does well in a competition, it is advisable to start development early. But especially with Robocode, there is also a danger of getting carried away, and I recommend to keep in mind the ratio between the effort you invest and the benefits you may get from it.
Project Documentation on TRAC Wikis
04/10/11 14:42
Over the weekend I had a first look at the project documentation on the team wikis. While I received a few requests for an extension of the deadline of last Thursday, I was quite disappointed to see that most teams do not have anything on their TRAC Wikis yet.
I will grade the Milestone Week 2 documents on Friday, so you need to make sure that your TRAC wiki contains at least the following by Thursday, midnight:
- Title of you project, optionally a team name
- list of the team members
- short description of the project
- comparison against existing related systems
- features, requirements, and evaluation criteria
- schedule
For reference purposes, you can look at last year’s team with the highest score for their documentation, Project Deuce.
My general policy is to let teams revise each document once, but the maximum improvement of their score will be half of the difference between the overall maximum score and their score in the first version. So if a team gets a score of 4 out of 10, the best they can hope for after revisions is (10-4)/2 = 3, resulting in an final score of 4+3 - 7.
I will grade the Milestone Week 2 documents on Friday, so you need to make sure that your TRAC wiki contains at least the following by Thursday, midnight:
- Title of you project, optionally a team name
- list of the team members
- short description of the project
- comparison against existing related systems
- features, requirements, and evaluation criteria
- schedule
For reference purposes, you can look at last year’s team with the highest score for their documentation, Project Deuce.
My general policy is to let teams revise each document once, but the maximum improvement of their score will be half of the difference between the overall maximum score and their score in the first version. So if a team gets a score of 4 out of 10, the best they can hope for after revisions is (10-4)/2 = 3, resulting in an final score of 4+3 - 7.
Pacman vs Wumpus World
03/10/11 10:56
Over the last few years, we’ve used the Wumpus World environment (BotEnvironment and WumpusEnvironment) for several of the lab and homework activities. While it works, it has its quirks, which is not surprising considering that it’s essentially an enhanced extra-credit assignment done by Matt Colón, a former 480 student.
I just saw that the Stanford AI course (which will also be offered online for free) uses a Pacman environment written in Python for the Search algorithms assignment. If anybody is interested in doing this instead of the Wumpus World, let me know. What’s especially appealing to me, of course, is the auto-grading option that they apparently use. While I don’t know this, I assume they will use the auto-grade option for the online version as well. To get the assignment graded by their system, you’ll have to enroll in the online course, and select the “advanced” option.
This may be especially interesting for the teams working on a Pacman team project anyway.
I just saw that the Stanford AI course (which will also be offered online for free) uses a Pacman environment written in Python for the Search algorithms assignment. If anybody is interested in doing this instead of the Wumpus World, let me know. What’s especially appealing to me, of course, is the auto-grading option that they apparently use. While I don’t know this, I assume they will use the auto-grade option for the online version as well. To get the assignment graded by their system, you’ll have to enroll in the online course, and select the “advanced” option.
This may be especially interesting for the teams working on a Pacman team project anyway.
Blackboard AI Wiki, Discussion Board Access Problems
02/10/11 21:39
If you’re getting an “Access Denied” message when trying to go to the AI Wiki or Discussion Board on Blackboard, let me know. The wiki is on a separate Blackboard course, and especially for students who added the course later, I may have to manually add them.
Grading of Programming Labs and Assignments
02/10/11 19:26
I'm not sure if I'll have a grader this quarter, so I'll try to do most of the grading of the programming labs and assignments during the labs. If time permits, I'll start on Tuesday, and I'll have a quick look at your implementation. To make this go smoothly, it is helpful if you have your program running and the README file visible. If you want to be extra efficient, you can open multiple instances of the BotEnvironment with the different agents.
Quiz Week 3
02/10/11 19:20 Filed in: 480
The Week 3 quiz will be available on Tuesday from 9:30 to 11:00 for the first section, and from 4:30 - 6:00 pm for the afternoon section.
It will cover “Intelligent Agents,” the material for Week 2; see the schedule for mappings to the text book and the slides.
It will cover “Intelligent Agents,” the material for Week 2; see the schedule for mappings to the text book and the slides.
Lab and Assignment Submission via Blackboard
02/10/11 19:07
Blackboard is a bit picky with respect to the file types it accepts, and may balk at attempts to submit archive files such as .zip, .gz, .tar, etc. If this happens, you can add an extension like .pdf to the archive. So instead of submitting 480F11-fkurfess-L2.zip, submit 480F11-fkurfess-L2.zip.pdf.
Project Template Available on your Team Wiki
02/10/11 19:06 Filed in: 480
When you create new pages in your wiki, you can select templates from a pull-down menu. Those templates are intended for my courses with team projects, and they contain information on what to put in the respective pages.