EEL 6938 - Engineering Applications of Autonomous Agents

Spring 2005

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 - 444
Phone:	407-823-2320
E-mail:	lboloni@cpe.ucf.edu
Web Site:	http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~lboloni/Teaching/EEL6938_2005 The assignments and the other announcements will be posted on the course web site
Classroom:	ENG-388
Class Hours:	Tuesday, Thursday 9:00 - 10:20
Office Hours:
Pre-requisites:	EEL 4781 (Computer Networks) or equivalent, EEL4872 (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 video stream:	video stream page
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. -A quantitative, comparative study of different approaches or algorithms proposed for certain problems (e.g. negotiation protocols, team formation etc.)
Grading:	Homework: 20 % Project: 60 % Final Exam: 20 % Standard 90/80/70/60 scale will be used for final grades (curved if necessary)
Teaching assistant / Cameraman:	Linus Luotsinen

Grades

Goto: Links, Syllabus, Grades

Class project

You have 3 choices for the class project.

Option 1: Implement an agent for the Feed-Flee-Mate game. This project involves Java programming. Your agent should implement one of the agent paradigms studied in class, and it should be able to run with the other agents. Click here for detailed requirements and implementation choices.
Option 2: Write an exhaustive review of a topic relevant to the class. This project does not involve programming, but requires a lot of (intelligent) reading. Click here for detailed requirements and a list of topics
Option 3: Propose your own project. This is the hardest, as it requires you to specify your own project. It is acceptable to share a project with another class, but the requirements will be higher as well. Please make an appointment with me if you want to do an individual project like this. Bring a one page specification.

Project assignments

Syllabus

Lect.no.	Date	Topic	Lecture Notes, Readings, Homeworks
1	Jan. 11	Introduction
2	Jan. 13	Reflections on graduate studies.	Bill Griswold: How to Read an Engineering Research Paper Ivan Sutherland: Technology and Courage How to have a bad career in research? Stan Franklin and Art Graesser: Is it an Agent, or just a Program?: A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agents
3	Jan. 18	Agent systems emulating human behavior -Cognitive architectures -Soar.	SLIDES: Cognitive Architectures Soar group at University of Michigan
4	Jan. 20	-Social models of agency. Modeling emotional behavior.	PRESENTATION: Soar Demo (Majid Ali Khan) [Slides] SLIDES: Affective Computing Affective computing group at MIT Aaron Sloman, Ron Chrisley and Matthias Scheutz: The Architectural Basis of Affective States and Processes Matthias Scheutz: Useful Roles of Emotions in Artificial Agents: A Case Study from Artificial Life.
5	Jan. 25	-Laws of agent societies.	PRESENTATION: Brooks' Subsumption Architecture (Ryan Fitz-Gibbon) [Slides]
6	Jan. 27	Multi-agent systems -Speech-act inspired communication protocols. -KQML	FIPA standards
7	Feb. 1	-General model of an agent	PRESENTATION: Soar Quake (Rex Oleson) [Slides]
8	Feb. 3	Law-Governed Interaction	SLIDES: Law Governed Interaction Naftaly H. Minsky and Victoria Ungureanu: Law-Governed Interaction: a Coordination and Control Mechanism for Heterogeneous Distributed Systems
9	Feb. 8	-Mobile agents.	SLIDES: Mobile Agents David Kotz and Robert S. Gray: Mobile Agents and the Future of the Internet David Kotz's keynote presentation for the MA2002 conference
10	Feb. 10	-Mutability, splitting and merging - Problems of identity.	SLIDES: Mutable agents HOMEWORK 1
11	Feb. 15	Open discussion.	Hyacinth S. Nwana and Divine T. Ndumu: A Perspective on Software Agents Research
12	Feb. 17	Autonomy in e-commerce systems -Auction protocols.	SLIDES: Competitive agents
13	Feb. 22	-Negotiation. -Nash equilibria
14	Feb. 24		PRESENTATION: Agents and stock markets (Jose A. Saumell) PRESENTATION: Adaptive learning algorithm (Gary Stein)
15	Mar. 1		PRESENTATION: Agents in the Society of Mind (William Walters) [Slides] ASSIGNED PRESENTATION: Tamagochi description and demo (Johann Nguyen)
16	Mar. 3		HOMEWORK 1 DUE ASSIGNED PRESENTATION: Auction protocols (Steve Mattingley) ASSIGNED PRESENTATION: Jade agent system (with demo) (Douglas Lother)
17	Mar. 8	Open discussion.	ASSIGNED PRESENTATION: Swarm agent simulation framework (Charles Houchin) ASSIGNED PRESENTATION: Axelrod's experiments on the prisoner's dilemma agents (Jin Lyu)
18	Mar. 10	Autonomy in embodied agents	PRESENTATION: NASA's Mobile Agent (Preeti Kishor Kashid) PRESENTATION: Agents for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Justin Key)
	Mar. 15	Spring break
	Mar. 17	Spring break
19	Mar. 22	Context-based reasoning	PRESENTATION: Teamwork in Robocup (Joakim Ekblad) PRESENTATION: Context-based reasoning (Viet Trinh)
20	Mar. 24	Biologically inspired agents and emergent behavior
21	Mar. 29	-Ant algorithms. Pheromone routing.	PRESENTATION: The The Samuel system for learning behaviours for autonomous vehicles (Sanaa Kamari) [Slides] PRESENTATION: Ant Algorithms (Alice Libert) Marco Dorigo and Gianni Di Caro: Ant Algorithms for Discrete Optimization
22	Mar. 31
23	Apr. 5	-Social potential fields. -Flocking.	Craig Reynolds: Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model PRESENTATION: Flocking Demo (Linus Luotsinen) J.H. Reif and H. Wang, Social Potential Fields: A Distributed Behavioral Control for Autonomous Robots PRESENTATION: Social Potential Fields (Scott Vander Welde)
24	Apr. 7		PRESENTATION: Game AI in Unreal Tournament (Peter Smith) PRESENTATION: Game AI in Age of Empires (Dinh Le) [Slides] HOMEWORK 2
25	Apr. 12	Feed-flee-mate running
26	Apr. 14	Feed-flee-mate running
27	Apr. 19	Feed-flee-mate running
28	Apr. 21	Feed-flee-mate running	HOMEWORK 2 DUE
	Apr. 29	Projects due	PROJECTS DUE

EEL 6938 - Engineering Applications of Autonomous Agents

Spring 2005

Class project

Syllabus

Grades:

Links: