Artificial Intelligence

Hector Geffner

Presentation
The focus of this course is autonomous behavior, and more precisely, the different methods for developing "agents" capable of making their own decisions in real or simulated environments. This includes characters in video-games, robots, softbots in the web, etc. The problem of developing autonomous agents is a fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence, where three basic approaches have been developed: the programmer-based approach, where the agent responses are hardwired by a human programmer; the learning-based approach, where the agent learns to control its behavior from experience or information obtained from a teacher, and the model-based approach, where the agent control is derived automatically from a model describing the goals, the actions available, and the sensing capabilities. In the course, we review the three approaches to developing autonomous systems, with emphasis on the model-based approach, which in AI goes under the name of planning. We study autonomy in dynamic, partially observable settings involving a single agent or multiple agents. The course involves theory and experimentation.
Associated skills
• E1) Apply the models and algorithms of autonomous systems to a problem of well-identified interactive intelligent systems. Specifically, models and algorithms for sequential decision making in reactive environments.
• E3) Identify new uses of models and algorithms in the field of interactive intelligent systems. Specifically, uses that lend themselves to a formulation as sequential decision making.
• E6) Present the result of a research project in the field of interactive intelligent systems in a scientific forum and in interaction with other researchers.
Learning outcomes
• Understand the mathematical principles that form the basis of autonomous systems.
• Solve complex problems using Artificial Intelligence techniques.
• Recognize the type of problem and select appropriate algorithms.
• Implement Artificial Intelligence algorithms in a common programming language.