Non-Symbolic AI 2010 (G6042) last updated 14:30 11/1/10

Adrian Thompson, Pevensey 3 Room 4C7
                adrianth@sussex
email:     .ac.uk


Lectures:

Mon 15:00-16:00 CHI3-3R143
Tue 12:00-13:00 CHI3-3R143

Seminars: Weeks 2,4,6,8 - preparation necessary (material covered is an examinable part of the course, and helpful for the assignment)

Two groups, your timetable should say which you're in:

Tue 14:00-16:00 PEV1-2A11

Thur 15:00-17:00 PEV2-5A19

Your seminar tutor is Renan Moioli


Lecture Slides (provisional/actual, all in acrobat .pdf):
    - These start as last year's, and are subject to improvements and changes up to the day the lecture is given:
* marks ones that have been changed since the start of term.

Slides 1
Slides 2: Biomorphs demo (as a backup, there's a zipped windows executable in "resources")
Slides 3 : Demo 1 Demo 2 Demo 3(your browser needs Java, which can be downloaded here)
Slides 4
Slides 5: Brooks Academic, Brooks Corporate, Passive Dynamic Walking, Kirsh Earwig
Slides 6 (unfinished - we'll come back to evolutionary robotics later): Karl Sims
Slides 7 : Bibliography from 'Musical Networks'; Speedy Composer; Handwriting recogniser demo;
Slides 8 : backprop demo (there's a backup copy in "resources"); DARPA Grand Challenge; ALVINN
Slides 9 : backprop function approximator demo comp.ai.neural-nets FAQ (see section 3: Generalisation)
Slides 10 : Slides Part Two
Slides 11 : GOLEM RepRap (cheap 3D printer)
Slides 12 : Life32 used in the lecture (backup in "resources"); Web broswer java G.O.Life; Wolfram Complexity Article; WolframTones; Paul Brown
Slides 13 : Ant-like sorting demo (backup in "resources"); Dorigo's Ant Colony Optimization page; Deneubourg; Craig Reynolds: boids, list of applications
Slides 14: Jason Lohn; Koza's GP resource
Slides 15: (see "Coevolution" subdirectory in "resources")
Slides 16: (see Huang_Guo_Lu... and /GenBebop in "resources"); GenBebop

Seminars

Week 2

Week 4


Coursework
The specification will be announced here and in lectures. Reports (with program listing) should be submitted in the normal way in week 10. You can use the week 8 seminar to get more help, but do ask if you are struggling. Some report-writing tips are given in the lecture accompanied by “Slides 12” above.



Resources - seminar reading, demos, etc. This directory is only accessible from Sussex University domains.



Schedule:


Week 1

Intro

EA basics

no seminar

Week 2

EA basics

Robotics & AI

Seminar 1: read "Fungus Eaters"

Week 3

Robotics & AI

Neural Net basics

no seminar

Week 4

Neural Net basics

Neural Net basics

Seminar 2: help/discussion on Genetic Algorithm exercise

Week 5

Broader & Advanced Topics

no seminar

Week 6

Seminar 3: help/discussion on Neural Network exercise

Week 7

no seminar

Week 8

Seminar 4: reading TBA, help on assignment

Week 9

no seminar

Week 10

Assignment hand-in


Assessment is weighted 50% on the assignment, 50% on the exam.
For past exam papers, type G6042 (the previous code for this course) into the search box here. For earlier years type G5070 (the previous code for this course). The syllabus for 2002,4,5,6,7,8,9 was similar to this year, but 2003 was a bit different.


Reading

For Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Understanding Intelligence  Pfeiffer & Scheier, MIT Press 1999

For Genetic Algorithms: An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms Mitchell, MIT Pr 1996

For Neural Networks: Neural Computing Beale & Jackson, Adam Hilger 1990

Further Reading (there's a lot more out there):

Designing Autonomous Agents,  P. Maes (MIT)

Artificial Life,  C. Langton (MIT)

An Intro to Neural Networks, J. Anderson (MIT)

Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, CW Bishop (OUP)

Genetic Algorithms in Search … D. Goldberg (Addison-Wesley)

From Animals to Animats (Series of conference proceedings for SAB conferences).