Non-Symbolic AI 2008 (G6042)

Adrian Thompson, Pevensey 3 Room 4C7
                adrianth@sussex
email:     .ac.uk
Lectures: all in Pevensey 1, Room 1A6
Mon   11:00-12:00
Fri      10:00-11:00

Seminars: Weeks 2,4,6,8 - preparation necessary (material covered is an examinable part of the course, and helpful for the assignment)
Group 1 Tue 9:00-11:00, Pev1-2A3
Group 2 Fri 14:00-16:00, Pev1-2A11
Your seminar tutor is Tom Baker
Lecture Slides (all in acrobat .pdf):
    - if you want to look ahead, last year's slides are here, but some things will be different or missing
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: comp.ai.neural-nets FAQ (see section 3: Generalisation)
Slides 8: backprop demo (there's a backup copy in "resources"); DARPA Grand Challenge; ALVINN
Slides 9
Slides 10
Slides 11: GOLEM
Slides 12: Life32 used in the lecture (backup in "resources"); Web broswer java G.O.Life; Wolfram Article
Slides 13: Ant-like sorting demo (backup in "resources"); Dorigo's Ant Colony Optimization page; Deneubourg
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
Week 6
Week 8

Coursework
The assessed programming assignment, should be straightforward if you have used the exercises for the seminars well. You are asked to submit a listing of your program, together with a short report, in week 10 by 4pm Thursday (13th March). Tom can give you help along the way. The specification of the assignment is here.

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 G5070 (the previous code for this course) into the search box here. The syllabus for 2002,4,5,6,7 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).