T-79.230 Foundations of Agent-Based Computing (3 cr)

Spring 2003

[General Information] [Examinations] [Lectures] [Seminar] [Project assignments] [TOPI]

Other years: [Spring 2004] [Spring 2002]

Topics of this course include theory, implementation technology and applications of agent-based systems.

General Information

• Registrations using TOPI or by attending the first two lectures.
• Lectures by D.Sc.(Tech.) Tomi Janhunen: Tuesdays 11-14, room TB353
• Tutorials and project assignments by Stud.Tech. Mikko Särelä: Thursdays 15-16, room TB353
• Course material:
  
  • Russel, S. and Norvig, P.: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice Hall, 1995.
  • Seminar articles (see below).
• Project assignments will be related to the simulation league of RoboCup.
• In order to pass the course one has to
  • give a seminar talk
  • complete a project assignment and
  • pass an exam.
• Brochure (.ps.gz / .pdf) in Finnish.

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• April 3, 2003, final results (published on May 20, 2003)
• May 8, 2003 final results (published on May 27, 2003)
• September 3, 2003 final results (published on October 21, 2003)
• Next exam will be arranged in Spring 2004.
• Please register for the exams using TOPI.

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Tentative schedule for Spring 2003

January 14: Introduction (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Practical arrangements, a brief introduction
January 16: Tutorial 1 (RoboCup demo)

January 21: Lecture 1 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Intelligent agents [R&N: Chapter 2]
January 23: no tutorial, but help for making project proposals

January 28: Lecture 2 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Uncertainty [R&N: Chapter 14]
January 30: Tutorial 2 (solutions), project proposals due

February 4: Lecture 3 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Belief networks [R&N: Chapter 15]
February 6: Tutorial 3 (solutions)

February 11: Lecture 4 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Making simple decisions [R&N: Chapter 16]
February 13: Tutorial 4 (solutions)

February 18: no lecture due to skiing holidays

February 20: no tutorial

February 25: Lecture 5 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Making complex decisions [R&N: Chapter 17]
February 27: Tutorial 5 (solutions)

March 4: Lecture 5 (.ps.gz / .pdf)

Learning [R&N: Chapters 18.1-18.5, 18.7, and 19.6]
March 6: Tutorial 6 (solutions)

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Results

• List of accepted seminar presentations

Instructions

• Presentations are supposed to last at least 35 minutes.
• In addition, 10 minutes will be reserved for questions and discussion.
• Appropriateness of articles is approved by the lecturer. Please send an email in which you specify
  • which article(s) you would like to present; and
  • when you would like to give your talk.
• If the article that you are interested in appears to be too short/superficial (to make a 35 minute presentation), you may
  • either check the references for futher material; or
  • present another but related paper.
• Incoming requests are served on first-come-first-served basis.
• Making a summary of you paper is not required, but you are supposed to give a copy of your slides for the lecturer.

Schedule

March 18, 12:15-13:00: Teddy Grenman presents a paper "Improving Fault-Tolerance by Replicating Agents" by A. Fedoruk and R. Deters

March 18, 13:15-14:00: Teemu Kämäräinen presents a paper "How Social Spiders Inspired an Approach to Region Detection" by C. Bourjot, V. Chevrier, and V. Thomas

March 25, 12:15-13:00: Tero Hilska presents a paper "Object Persistence for Synthetic Creatures" by D.A. Isla and B.M. Blumberg

March 25, 13:15-14:00: Antti Savolainen presents a paper "Designing an Auction Protocol under Asymmetric Information on Nature's Selection" by T. Ito, M. Yokoo, and S. Matsubara

April 1, 11:15-12:00: Markus Eräpolku presents a paper "Interacting with Virtual Characters in Interactive Storytelling" by M. Cavazza, F. Charles, and S.J. Mead

April 1, 12:15-13:00: Jan Lönnberg presents a paper "Learning Sequences of Actions in Collectives of Autonomous Agents" by K. Tumer, A.K. Agogino, and D.H. Wolpert

April 1, 13:15-14:00: Antti Päällysaho presents a paper "How to Make a Self-Reconfigurable Robot Run" by K. Støy, W.-M. Shen, and P. Will

April 8, 11:15-12:00: Kari Kostiainen presents a paper "A Step Towards Irrationality: Using Emotions to Change Belief" by S. Marsellas, and J. Gratch

April 8, 12:15-13:00: Esa Linnanto presents a paper "Extracting Reputation in Multi Agent Systems by Means of Social Network Topology" by J.M. Pujol, R. Sangeusa, and J. Delgado

April 8, 13:15-14:00: Samuli Kekki presents a paper "PETEEI: A PET with Evolving Emotional Intelligence" by M.S. El-Nasr, T.R. Ioerger, and J. Yen

April 15, 11:15-12:00: Juha Raitio presents a paper "A Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Algorithm using Extended Optimal Response" by N. Suematsu and A. Hayashi

April 15, 13:15-14:00: Tommi Vainikainen presents a paper "Self-organising Communities Formed by Middle Aents" by F. Wang

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• Results as of July 9, 2003.
• You are supposed to make a short project proposal (at most one page) by January 30.
• Proposals are sent/given to Mikko Särelä for his approval.

• The project team (from 1 to 3 persons).
• What is to be done:
  • Basically you should implement a soccer playing agent that is able to make a goal and to act as a goalie.
  • It is also possible to make enhancements to an existing implementation (many of which can be accessed from RoboCup Simulator Team Repository).
• What tools, programming language(s) and libraries are to be used.

Troubleshooting

• gcc has been updated in niksula which may cause problems when compiling RoboCup software. One solution is to mention directory /p/compilers/gcc-3.0.4/lib/ as the value of the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

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