Intelligent Autonomous Agents

ICS 606/EE 606 -- Fall 2011

Note: This schedule is updated during the semester.
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Week 1, Mon, Aug  22 - Introduction, What is an Autonomous Agent?, Discussion

• Course Outline (pdf)
• Read Ch. 1 - Introduction (MAS)
• Lecture 1 - Introduction (pdf)
• Lecture 1B - Agent Applications (pdf)
• Project description
• Project ideas
  • UMBC Agent Resources http://agents.umbc.edu/
  • Resources from AgentLink http://www.agentlink.org/index.php

• Read Ch. 2 - Intelligent Agents (MAS)
• Lecture 2 - Agent Environments and Agents as Intentional Systems (pdf)
• Lecture #2B - Notations and Abstract Architectures for Agents (pdf)
• Discussion Papers I (Background)
• Intelligent Agents: The Key Concepts, Mickael Wooldridge, in MASA 2001, Springer-Verlag LNAI 2322, pp. 3-43, Berlin, 2002. (local copy)
• AI and Agents, State of the Art, Eduardo Alonso, AI Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 25-30. Online from www.aaai.org local copy
• Read Ch. 2 - Intelligent Agents (AI) (Russell and Norvig’s text "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach", AIMA). From second edition. (pdf).
• Chapter 1, Weiss - Intelligent Agents online (pdf) from publisher.
• Discussion papers II
• Stan Franklin and Art Graesser "Is it an Agent, or just a Program?: A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agent," (html) (http://www.msci.memphis.edu/%7Efranklin/AgentProg.html) Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, published as Intelligent Agents III, Springer-Verlag, 1997, 21-35.

• Monday - Labor Day Holiday - No classes
• Read Ch. 3 - Deductive Reasoning Agents (MAS)
• Lecture #3 - Deductive Reasoning Agents Part 1 (pdf), Part 2 (pdf),
• Skim Ch. 7 - Logical Agents (AI)
• Discussion papers III
• Ronald J. Brachman, "Systems That Know What They're Doing", IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol 17, n 6, Nov-Dec 2002. (pdf at IEEE) (local copy)
• Telling humans and computers apart automatically, Communications of the ACM, Volume 47, Issue 2, February 2004, Pages: 56 - 60. (pdf from ACM digital library). local copy
• Project Proposals Due on Friday, 5 pm

• Skim - Chapter 3 and 4 - Solving Problems by Searching, Beyond Classical Search (AIMA)
• Lecture - Search algorithms for agents (pdf).
• Lecture - Production Systems (pdf).
• Discussion papers IV
• Peter Norvig and David Cohn, Adaptive Software article (html)
• Discussion Notes: Developing Agent Systems slides (pdf)
• Example search algorithms in Lisp sssearch
• Example - Vacuum cleaner world Extra Credit Assignment details , slides (pdf)
• Overview of R & N Agent code from AI, A Modern Approach link
• Read Ch. 4 - Practical Reasoning Agents (MAS)
• Lecture #4 - Practical Reasoning Agents part 1 (pdf), part 2 (pdf).

• Lecture - The Blocks World (pdf)
• Read Ch. 5 - Reactive and Hybrid Agents (MAS)
• Lecture #5 - Reactive and Hybrid Agents (pdf)
• Friday - Project Reference Lists Due, 5 pm

• Read - Chapter 6 - Understanding each other (MAS)
• Lecture #6 - Ontologies and the Semantic Web (pdf).
• Read - Chapter 7 - Communicating
• Lecture - #7 - Communicating (pdf).
• Wed - Project micro-presentations (2 min + 1 min for questions each)
  1. Anthony - Agents for Scheduling Processes and Managing Memory
  2. Russell - Agents for Unmanned Vehicle Navigation
  3. Rylan - Agents for Natural Language Processing
  4. Cynthia - Agents for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Navigation

• Mon - Paper presentation and discussion
  
  1. Anthony presents Mobile agent-based approach for efficient network management and resource allocation: framework and applications In IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, , vol.20, no.4, pp.858-872, May 2002. ,
• An Introduction to AI Robotics (pdf) by Robin Murphy .
• Robocup and Agent Soccer (pdf)
• Discussion Papers IV - Robocup Soccer
  • The Road to Robocup 2050, H. Burkhard, D. Duhaut, M. Fujita, P. Lima, R. Murphy and P. Rojas, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, p. 31-38, June, 2002. local copy (pdf)
  • Robocup homepage ( http://www.robocup.org/ ).
  • An Editor for User-Friendly Strategy Creation (pdf), team description, 1999, Headless Chickens III.
  • Layered Specification of Intelligent Agents (2000) (pdf), Paul Scerri, Johan Ydren, and Nancy E. Reed. Layered specification of intelligent agents. In Proc of the Sixth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI 2000), LNAI Vol. 1886, pages 565-575, Springer-Verlag, 2000. (pdf)
  • Headless Chickens IV (pdf), team description, 2000. P. Stone, T. Balch, and G. Kraetzschmar (Eds.): RoboCup 2000, LNAI 2019, pp. 493-496, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.
• Wed Discussion
  • Robocup Rescue & Robotic Search and Rescue (pdf).
  • Robocup Rescue Home http://www.robocuprescue.org/
  • Robocup Rescue Agent Simulation Home http://www.robocuprescue.org/agentsim.html
  • NIST Performance and testing of Autonomous Mobile Robots http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/projects/USAR/
  • Read - Chapter 8 - Working Together
  • Lecture - #8 - Working Together (pdf).

• Mon
  • Jeff presents Eliminating duplication and ensuring file integrity in Multisync: A multiagent system for ubiquitous file synchronization Muaz Niazi, Umar Manzoor, Kiran Ijaz, and Summiya Hina Saleem In: 9th International Multitopic Conference, (INMIC) pp. 1 - 6, IEEE Press, Dec. 2005, Karachi, Pakistan.
  • Read Chapter 9 - Methodologies
  • Lecture #9 - Methodologies (pdf).
• Wed
  • Read Chapter 10 - Applications
  • Lecture #10 - Applications (pdf).
  • Discussion papers
    1. Engineering Characteristics of Autonomous Agent Architectures, P. Scerri and N. E. Reed, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, vol. 12, pp. 191--212, April 2000. Available online at Taylor and Francis publisher (PDF). (Local copy).
    2. Autonomy & Applications of Agents
       Prof. Reed presents Dimensions of Adjustable Autonomy, by K.S. Barber, C. E. Martin, N. E. Reed, and D. Kortenkamp, In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence vol.2112, Eds: R. Kowalczyk et al., Advances in Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI workshop reader, pp. 353-361, Springer Verlag, Berlin 2001. Available online from Springer. local copy (pdf) , slides (pdf)

• Mon - Discussion, Exam review,
  • sample exam questions.
  • Wed - Examination (open book, notes)

  Week 11, Mon, Oct   31 -

  • Mon - Paper presentations
    1. Anthony presents Allocating scarce resources and Bargaining for resources , Multiagent Systems, M. Wooldridge, Ch. 14-15.
  • Wed - Paper presentations
    1. Russell presents Towards Modeling the Traffic Data on Road Networks , by U. Demiryurek, B. Pan, F. Banaei-Kashani and C. Shahabi, IWCTS conference, , pp. 13-18, ACM press, Nov, 2009.
    2. Cynthia presents Decentralized Cooperative Urban Tracking of Multiple Ground Targets by a Team of Autonomous UAVs , by M. Hirsch, H. Ortiz-Pena and M. Sudit, Information Fusion (FUSION) 2009, p. 1-7, IEEE Press, July, 2011.

• Mon - Paper presentations
  1. Rylan presents Multi-Agent Systems for Natural Language Processing , by A. Carvalho, D. da Silva de Paiva, J. Silva, and V. Lima, online: 10.1.1.28.667.pdf ,
  2. Jeff presents JADE A White Paper , by F. Bellifemine, G. Caire, A. Poggi, and G. Rimassa, in exp magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp, 6-19, Sept. 2003.
• Wed - discussion
• 50 Years of AI (pdf), see the notes enlarged (pdf)
• Marvin Minsky and The Society of Mind (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0671657135/marvinminskyA/)

• Discussion Papers
  • Making Adjustable Autonomy Easier with Teamwork In  Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence vol.2112, Eds: R. Kowalczyk et al., Advances in Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI workshop reader, pp 339-352, Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2001. local copy (pdf) slides (pdf)
  • A User Controlled Approach to Adjustable Autonomy, Nancy E. Reed. In Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 1-10, Waikoloa, Hawaii, Jan, 2005. IEEE Press. local copy (pdf) slides (pdf)
• Thurs - Project Progress Reports Due, midnight
• Veteran's Day Holiday - Fri. Nov. 15

• Mon - Mini oral project progress reports (5-10 min/person + 2 min for questions) groups of 2 should present together or consecutively.
  1. Anthony presents Competing for Resources: An Agent Approach to Scheduling Processes and Managing Memory
     
  2. Cynthia presents Survey of Cooperative Methods Utilized by UAVs to Pursue Combatant Targets
  3. Russell presents Optimization of Road Traffic with Autonomous Vehicles
• Wed - Mini oral project progress reports
  1. Jeff presents JFindDupe, Evaluating JADE for Creating an Extensible, Multi-Agent System that Finds and Displays Files with Duplicate Names.
  2. Rylan presents Autonomous Agents and Natural Language Processing
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): www.w3.org/
• W3C Semantic Web Activity: www.w3.org/2001/sw/
• DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) home page: www.daml.org/

• Mon - Learning, Discussion
  • Overview (pdf).
  • Learning in RoboCup Soccer - Peter Stone's thesis
    http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/thesis/, (pdf slides)
  • Learning: AIMA, 3rd ed. Ch. 18-21, (pdf)
• Wed - Discussion - Personal assistant agents,
  • Electric Elves (pdf).
  • Electric Elves - Agent Technology for Supporting Human Organizations, by H. Chalupsky, Y. Gil, C. Knoblock, K. Lerman, J. Oh, D. Pynadath, T. Russ and M. Tambe. AI Magazine, Vol 32, No. 2, pp. 11-24, 2002. local copy (pdf).
• Thanksgiving Holiday - Thurs- Fri. Nov. 24-25, UH closed

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(c) N. E. Reed, 2004-2011