CSC 486 Syllabus
General Information
Course Description
Current research in the field of artificial intelligence with emphasis on cooperative agents, distributed agents, and decision making in complex, concurrent environments. AI programming in a distributed environment [from the 2011-13 Cal Poly Catalog].
This course explores the topic ofintelligent agents. It discusses the differences between agents and conventional computer programs, investigates different types of agent architectures, and examines various important aspects and applications of intelligent agents in more detail.
Prerequisites: CSC/CPE 480 and graduate standing, or consent of instructor.
Knowledge of Java is expected for homework assignments and term projects.
The goal of the course is to understand important problems, challenges, concepts and techniques dealing with the use of intelligent agents for computational tasks. Upon satisfactory completion of this course, the student will:
- Understand the fundamental concepts in the study intelligent agents.
- Be familiar with the basic concepts, methods, techniques, and tools for the use of intelligent agents in computer-based systems.
- Understand the components and functions of intelligent agents.
- Apply the principles and methods of intelligent agents to a small-scale practical problem within the framework of a term project.
- Be prepared for further study in the design, implementation, and application of agent-based systems.
- Critically evaluate current trends in intelligent agents and their manifestation in business and industry.
In order to achieve these goals, students learn how to analyse, design, implement and evaluate intelligent agent programs and systems of varying complexities. The core aspect of these systems is to offer support to human users, in particular with relatively tedious or possibly dangerous tasks that are difficult or impossible to solve with conventional technology.
Textbooks and Course Material
The slides I'm using in the lectures will be made available either through this Web site, or the PolyLearn system.
Most of the books and articles on "intelligent agents" are research monographs, or collections of research papers. Textbooks on Knowledge-based Systems and Artificial Intelligence mostly concentrate on questions related to the representation and manipulation of knowledge through computers and various techniques used for that purpose, but not so much on aspects that distinguish intelligent agents from traditional artificial intelligence approaches.
The following books contain some interesting chapters, and are suitable for specific topics. The schedule for the course contains pointers to those chapters under the respective topic.
- Michael Wooldridge: An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems (2nd ed.). Wiley, 2009. ISBN 978-0-470-51946-2.[Amazon]
A textbook mostly intended for undergraduate classes, and used in several other courses on this topic. I haven't seen the second edition, but it looks like a good match for our course content, although the arrangement and the topics don't match perfectly. - Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall, 2009. ISBN 978-0136042594 [Amazon].
This is the CPE/CSC 480 textbook, and it has some material related to the contents of this course. The structure and emphasis, however, are a bit different, concentrating more on fundamental principles. (The first and second edition of this book are also useful, but of course they are somewhat dated by now). - G. Weiss (ed.): Multi-Agent Systems - A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence. MIT Press, 1999 [Amazon].
- M. Wooldridge: Reasoning about Rational Agents. MIT Press, 2000 [Amazon].
I've put together a longer list of books on this topic on Amazon.
A nice overview of the literature on intelligent agents is at the Web site of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
Some agent environments are based on the Jess system, which is described in
- Ernest Friedman-Hill, "Jess in Action." Manning Publications, 2003.
For more material on Jess and CLIPS (an earlier version of an expert system shell with which Jess is mostly compatible), see the CPE/CSC 481 Syllabus.
Further material will be made available through handouts in class, and through pointers to relevant Web pages.
Grading Policy
| Assignments | 30% |
| Individual Presentation/Paper | 30% |
| Team Project | 30% |
| Participation | 30% |
The table gives an overview of the calculation of the grades. I reserve the right, however, to change the formula used. Please note that the project consists of several parts that will be evaluated separately. The project will also be done in teams, and the performance of the team as a whole will be graded unless there is a clear disparity in the contribution of the individual team members. Should this be the case, I might ask for additional documentation like work sheets, email messages, or draft copies of documentation to evaluate individual contributions.