Semester 2 G54DIA Designing Intelligent Agents

This module gives a basic introduction to the analysis and design of intelligent agents, software systems which perceive their environment and act in that environment in pursuit of their goals.

Structure of the Module

The module consists of two parts

• lectures: covering the design of intelligent agents; and
• project work: involving the specification, design and implementation of one or more simple agents.

Lectures

Lectures are on Mondays at 16:00 and Fridays at 10:00 in room C60 (CS).

Project Work

Each student must specify, design and implement one or more simple agents as described in the Project Description lecture.

A Java agent package (Package uk.ac.nott.cs.g54dia) is provided as a starting point for your project work.

Tutorials

The project work is supported by group and individual tutorials. The group tutorials cover the use of the Java agent package. The individual tutorials cover the design and implementation of your project.

Assessment

Assessment is by project work and reports.

Recommended Reading

• Wooldridge (2002), An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, Wiley.
• Russell & Norvig (2003), Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall (or the 1995 1st edition).
• Ferber (1999), Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Addison-Wesley.
• Arkin (1998), Behavior-Based Robotics, MIT Press.
• Braitenberg (1984), Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, MIT Press.

Note that there is also a version of the reading list with links to the University Library catalogue.

Other Resources

• The AAAI Agents page has some overview papers and some useful links. The AAAI Springboard page also has lots of references to other AI topics, such as Machine Learning.
• The AI lab at the University of Michigan has a useful survey of cognitive and agent architectures.

Suggested Reading

Note that the following list of suggested reading is provisional, as it may necessary to change the order in which topics are presented.

• Introduction: Russell & Norvig (2003), chapter 1; Wooldridge (2002), chapter 2.
• Task Environments: Russell & Norvig (2003), chapter 2.
• Reactive Architectures I: Braitenberg (1984); see also the Braitenberg Vehicles simulator and Craig Reynolds Boids page.
• Reactive Architectures II: Arkin (1998), chapter 4.
• Deliberative Architectures I: Russell & Norvig (2003), chapter 11; Wooldridge (2002), chapter 4.
• Deliberative Architectures II: Russell & Norvig (2003), chapter 12 (or chapter 13 of the 1st edition); Wooldridge (2002), chapter 4. For the IRMA architecture, see Martha Pollack's papers, especially Pollack et al (1994) "Experimental Investigation of an Agent Commitment Strategy"; for Tileworld itself see the working paper by Mike Lees.
Project description: von Frisch (1966). -->
• Hybrid Architectures: Arkin (1998), chapter 6; Wooldridge (2000), chapter 5, section 5.3. Xavier the robot
• Multi-Agent Systems I: Ferber (1999), chapters 1 and 4.
• Multi-Agent Systems II: Wooldridge (2003), chapter 9.

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Copyright © 2012 Brian Logan

This file is maintained by Brian Logan

Last modified: 2-Oct-2012, 12:06