CPS 196 - FALL 1999

CPS196
	Fall 1999		Programming Under Uncertainty

[ Grading | Resources | Syllabus ]

Class is over; we had fun! Here's some information on the final projects. We didn't have a camera the first day, so not all projects have photos. Thanks to Lenore for getting many of these photos together.

Beau and Bryan created a line-following robot that zooms around a track made of packing tape.
Chris trained up Markov models to harmonize in the style of Bach chorals.
Corey developed a learning rule for blackjack.
Cyrus made a robot that can parallel park. He called it ppmin2.
Daniel used temporal difference learning and minimax search to improve a checker-playing program.
Kevin built a robotic arm that plays rock-paper-scissors. Don't forget: paper covers rock.
Matt made a simple maze-exploring robot.
In spite of feeling under the weather, Peter showed us his poker-playing program.
Ralph and Lenore refined an earlier project to create a trailerbot that could quickly learn to back up without getting jackknifed.
Following in the footsteps of Pee Wee Herman and others, Robert made a robot that made him breakfast.
Valerie attacked minesweeper.
Luis, Dan, and Michail helped a lot!
I had a great time in the class. nice work everyone!

Syllabus

Dynamically changing syllabus:

Date	Topic
TUE AUG 31	Course Intro
THU SEP 2	Reactive Control
TUE SEP 7	Lego Intro
THU SEP 9	Subsumption
TUE SEP 14	Behavior Based
THU SEP 16	Floyd
TUE SEP 21	Light Wanderer Demos
THU SEP 23	Evaluation Functions
TUE SEP 28	Value Functions
THU SEP 30	Markov Decision Processes
TUE OCT 5	Reinforcement Learning
THU OCT 7	RL: Exploration
TUE OCT 12	Fall Break
THU OCT 14	RL: Demos
TUE OCT 19	Genetic Algorithms
THU OCT 21	Project discussions
TUE OCT 26	Midterm
THU OCT 28	Hidden Markov Models
TUE NOV 2	Probability Programming
THU NOV 4	Rhino
TUE NOV 9	POMDPs
THU NOV 11	Game Theory
TUE NOV 16	Prisoner's Dilemma
THU NOV 18	Vision
TUE NOV 23	Competitive Analysis
THU NOV 25	Thanksgiving Break
TUE NOV 30	Mobile Computing
THU DEC 2	Robot Videos
TUE DEC 7	Project Presentations I
TUE DEC 9	Project Presentations II
MON DEC 13	Final (9am-noon)

Instructor

Michael L. Littman

Office: D209 LSRC
Phone: 660-6537
Email: mlittman@cs.duke.edu

UTAs

Luis Villa

Phone: 613-0498
Email: liv@cs.duke.edu

Dan Mills

Phone: 384-1549 (383-3240 if busy)
Email: dm@cs.duke.edu

Robot lab phone number: 660-6581 (2nd floor fish bowl)

Meeting Times

TTH 9:10, D243.

Reading Materials

Will be photocopied for distribution.

Prerequisites

Programming experience at the level of 100 and a willingness to try something a bit different!

Grading

Class grade will be based on:

homework (10%)
programming labs (50%)
a midterm exam (20%), and
a final exam (20%).

Resources

Luis' Lego Robot page

Khepera
Khepera Simulator
Lynn Stein's course: Introduction to Interactive Programming
Leslie Kaelbling's and Bill Smart's course at Brown: Building Intelligent Robots
Other possible topics, not scheduled: Neural nets, ALVINN, supervised learning project, Machine learning programming, web agent, user interfaces, decision trees, TD Gammon, OSs, networking, multiagent, Probability, Vision.

Modified: Thu Oct 14 20:44:48 EDT 1999 by Michael Littman, mlittman@cs.duke.edu