CMSC 491M/691M, Spring 2003 - Course Syllabus
as of 3/17/03

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Date

Topic

Reading

 Comments
1 M 1/27 Course Overview; What's an Agent, Anyway? Slides
2 W 1/29 Introduction to Agents
  • Weiss Prologue and Chap. 1, "Intelligent Agents," Michael Wooldridge
    		•  Questions
    3 M 2/3 Cognitive Architectures: ACT-R
  • Overview of ACT-R
  • Introduction to ACT-R 5.0 (PowerPoint slides)
  • John R. Anderson et al.

    • An Integrated Theory of the Mind (excerpts TBA)
    (Submitted for publication.)    		 ACT-R home page
    ACT-R download
    Questions
    Guest speaker: Greg Trafton (NRL), ACT-R
    4 W 2/5 Introduction to Agents II
  • Michael Wooldridge and Nicholas R. Jennings,

    • Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice
    Knowledge Engineering Review 10(2), pp. 115-152, 1995.    		 Questions
    5 M 2/10 Cognitive Architectures: Soar (DL: Mike Pickens)
  • Jill Fain Lehman, John Laird, and Paul Rosenbloom

    • A Gentle Introduction to Soar, an Architecture for Human Cognition    		 Soar home page
    Soar download
    Questions
    6 W 2/12 Cognitive Architectures: Prodigy (DL: Eric Eaton)
  • Manuela Veloso et al.,

    • Integrating planning and learning: The PRODIGY architecture
    Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 7(1), 1995.    		 Prodigy home page
    Prodigy download
    Questions
    7 M 2/17 UMBC  CLOSED DUE TO SNOW
    8 W 2/19 UMBC CLOSED DUE TO SNOW
    9 M 2/24 Cognitive Architectures: APEX (DL: Josh Solomon)
  • Michael Freed,

    • Simulation in Design
    Chap. 1 of Simulating Human Performance in Complex, Dynamic Environments, Northwestern University Ph.D. dissertation, 1998.
  • Michael Freed,

    • Managing Multiple Tasks in Complex, Dynamic Environments
    In AAAI-98.    		 Midterm proposal due
    APEX home page
    APEX download
    10 W 2/26 Logical Architectures: Formal Methods / Golog
  • Weiss Chap. 8, "Formal Methods in DAI: Logic-Based Representation and Reasoning," Munindar P. Singh et al.
  • Hector J. Levesque et al.,

    • GOLOG: A logic programming language for dynamic domains
    J. Logic Programming 31:59-84, 1997.
  • Hector Levesque and Ray Reiter,

    • High-level robotic control: Beyond planning (Position paper)
    AAAI Spring Symposium on Integrating Robotics Research: Taking the Next Big Leap, March 1998.    		 GOLOG group home page
    GOLOG interpreter (in Prolog)
    Questions
    11 M 3/3 Logical Architectures: BDI Models (DL: Mike Smith)
  • Michael Wooldridge,

    • The Belief-Desire-Intention Model
    Chap. 2 in Reasoning about Rational Agents, The MIT Press, 2000.
  • Michael Georgeff et al.,

    • The Belief-Desire-Intention Model of Agency
    Intelligent Agents V.: Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL '98), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 1555, Heidelberg et al., 1999, pp. 1-10.    		 Questions
    12 W 3/5 Reactive Architectures: Brooks (DL: Jonathan Labin)
  • Rodney Brooks,

    • Intelligence Without Reason
    IJCAI-91, pp. 569-595, Sydney, Australia, August 1991.
  • Rodney Brooks,

    • Intelligence Without Representation
    Chapter 2 (pp. 25-81) in The Artificial Life Route to Artificial Intelligence: Building
    Embodied, Situated Agents, L. Steels and R. Brooks, eds., Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.    		 Questions
    13 M 3/10 Reactive Architectures: Pengi (DL: Mitch White) / AuRA (DL: Utkasha Ayachit)
  • Philip Agre and David Chapman,

    • PENGI: An implementation of a theory of activity
    In AAAI-87, pp. 268-272, Seattle, WA, 1987. 
  • Ronald C. Arkin and Tucker Balch,

    • AuRA: Principles and Practices in Review
    Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 9(2/3) :175-188, 1997.    		 Questions
    14 W 3/12 Theories of Mind: Society of Mind (DL: Anubhav Southalia)
  • Marvin Minsky,The Society of Mind (pp. 17-37 and 71-80), NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
    		•  Questions
    15 M 3/17 Theories of Mind: Emotion (DL: Neal Loman)
  • Aaron Sloman,

    • Beyond Shallow Models of Emotion
    Cognitive Processing 2(1): 177-198, 2001.
  • David Concar,

    • You're Wrong, Mr. Spock
    New Scientist, April 27, 1996.
  • Dave Archer,

    • I Know How You Feel
    New Scientist, May 8, 1999.    		 Project demonstrations this week
    Questions
    16 W 3/19 Theories of Mind: Consciousness (DL: Jim Weekley)
  • William Bechtel,

    • Consciousness: Perspectives from Symbolic and Connectionist AI
    Neuropsychologia, 33, 1075-1086.
  • Daniel C. Dennett,

    • Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds
    IIAS Symposium on Cognition, Computation and Consciousness, Kyoto, September 1-3, 1994.    		 Midterm report due
    Questions
    3/24 and 3/26 SPRING BREAK
    17 M 3/31 Introduction to Multi-Agent Systems
  • Weiss Chap. 2, "Multiagent Systems and Societies of Agents," Michael N. Huhns and Larry M. Stephens.
  • Nicholas R. Jennings, Katia Sycara, and Michael Wooldridge

    • A Roadmap of Agent Research and Development
    Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 1(1):7=38, July, 1998.
    18 W 4/2 Agent Project Overviews --
    19 M 4/7 Distributed Problem Solving (DL: Tom Walsh)
  • Weiss Chap. 3.1-3.4, "Distributed Problem Solving and Planning," Edmund H. Durfee.
    		•
    20 W 4/9 Trading Agent Competition in Agentcities, Guest speakers: Youyong Zou, Li Ding, and Harry Chen
  • Open Standards and Open Source for Agent-Based Systems, Bernard Burg, Jonathan Dale and Steven Willmott.
  • Designing the Market Game for a Trading Agent Competition, Michael P. Wellman, P. R. Wurman, K. O'Malley, R. Bangera, S. Lin, D. Reeves, and W. E. Walsh. IEEE Internet Computing, March/April (2001), 43-51.
  • TAGA: Trading Agent Competition in Agentcities, IJCAI-03 Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis, Youyong Zou, Tim Finin, Li Ding, Harry Chen, and Rong Pan, August, 2003, Acupulco, Mexico.
    		• Dr. dJ out of town - guest speakers Youyoung Zou, Li Ding, and Harry Chen
    21 M 4/14 Distributed Planning: PGP (DL: Steve Matuszek)
  • Weiss Chap. 3.5-3.8, "Distributed Problem Solving and Planning," Edmund H. Durfee.
    		•
    22 W 4/16 Distributed Planning: SharedPlans (DL: Neeraj Kashyap)
  • Barbara J. Grosz and Luke Hunsberger,

    • Planning and Acting Together
    AI Magazine (Special Issue on Distributed, Continual Planning), Volume 20(4), Winter 1999.    		 Paper proposal and bibliography due
    23 M 4/21 Distributed Planning: Joint Intentions
  • Hector J. Levesque, Philip R. Cohen, and Jose H. T. Nunes,

    • On Acting Together
    AAAI-90, pp. 94-100, 1990.
    Questions
    24 W 4/23 Distributed Planning: STEAM (DL: Marcella Hopkins)
  • Milind Tambe,

    • Agent Architectures for Flexible, Practical Teamwork
    AAAI-97
  • Milind Tambe,

    • Towards Flexible Teamwork
  • Journal of AI Research 7:83-124 (1997)
    		•
    Questions
    25 M 4/28 Distributed Rationality: Voting, Auctions (DL: Neal Loman)
  • Weiss Chap. 5.1-5.4, "Distributed Rational Decision Making," Tuomas W. Sandholm
  • Tuomas Sandholm, Winner determination in combinatorial auction generalizations, Tuomas Sandholm, Subhash Suri, Andrew Gilpin and David Levine, Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Bologna, Italy, July 2002, pp. 69-76.
    		• Dr. desJardins out of town; guest professor Tim Finin
    26 W 4/30 Distributed Rationality: Contract Nets (DL: Marcella Hopkins)
  • Weiss Chap. 5.7, "Distributed Rational Decision Making: Contract Nets," Tuomas W. Sandholm.
  • Randall Davis and Reid G. Smith,

    • Negotiation as a Metaphor for Distributed Problem Solving
    Artificial Intelligence 20:63-109; Elsevier Science Publishers, 1983    		 Dr. desJardins out of town; guest professor Tim Finin
    27 M 5/5 Learning in MAS: Distributed RL (DL: Justin Harris)
  • Weiss Chap. 6.1-6.3, "Learning in Multiagent Systems," Sandip Sen and Gerhard Weiss.
  • Coordination in Multiagent Reinforcement Learning: A Bayesian Approach, Georgios Chalkiadakis and Craig Boutilier, to appear at AAMAS 2003.
    		• Paper draft due
    28 W 5/7 MAS Project Presentations
    29 M 5/12 MAS Project Presentations Paper review due;
    Final paper due Friday 5/16

    Supplementary Reading

    This is a list of papers I ran across that seem interesting but probably won't fit into the syllabus.  Then again, perhaps we'll change the syllabus and read some of these after all.  Please feel free to send me citations/links for other additional reading that you find!