Professor Wheeler Ruml
How does a robot decide what to do? How does UPS route its trucks? How do telcos configure their networks? Algorithms for problems like these are some of the most fun in computer science and lie at the core of artificial intelligence and operations research. By the end of this graduate seminar, not only will you have read some of the current literature in this area, you will have pushed forward the frontier of knowledge. Note: although this is a graduate course, advanced undergraduates are welcome to talk with me about enrolling.
Official description: General techniques for solving shortest-path, constraint satisfaction, and combinatorial optimization problems, and their application in areas such as planning, robotics, and bioinformatics. Students read the scientific literature and prepare an original research contribution. Prereq: introductory AI or permission of the instructor.
This course will be offered in Spring 2011. Due to a clerical error, it does not appear in the printed course schedule.
Meeting time and place: we will meet in Kingsbury N233 on Mondays and Wednesdays. The currently planned time is 10:40-noon, but this may change once we know all the participants' constraints. If you can't make this time and are interested in enrolling, please let me know.
Mon Dec 14, 9:00am-noon: Paper presentations (18 min talk + 6 min Q&A).
Thur Dec 10: Discussion of final papers (10 min each). Reviews due at 9am and handed back in class.
Tue Dec 8: No reading. We'll talk about how to give a technical talk. Review versions of final papers due (bring 3 hardcopies to class for your reviewers). The AAAI formatting templates and macros are here.
[ Thur Dec 3: moved to Nov 25 ]
[ Tue Dec 1: moved to Nov 20 ]
[ Thur Nov 26: Happy Thanksgiving! ]
Wed Nov 25 (1:40-3): Holte's common misconceptions, SoCS-09. We'll also discuss paper writing tips and reviewing criteria (see notes under `writing' on this page).
Tue Nov 24: The FF planner, JAIR 2001.
Fri Nov 20 (1:40-3): continued discussion of the decision-theoretic planning survey (starting with section 5)
Thur Nov 19: decision-theoretic planning, JAIR 1999. We'll discuss through section 4 today.
Tue Nov 17: Project updates.
Thur Nov 12: labeled RTDP, ICAPS-03
Tue Nov 10: PBNF, IJCAI-09
Thur Nov 5: Testing Heuristics, J Heuristics, 1996
Tue Nov 3: hierarchical A*, SARA-05
Fri Oct 30 (note special day!): multi-point constructive search, ICAPS-06
[ Thur Oct 29: moved to Oct 30 ]
[ Tue Oct 27: moved to Oct 13 ]
Thur Oct 22: Novelty+, AAAI-99
Tue Oct 20: squeaky wheel optimization, JAIR 1999
Thur Oct 15: Individual presentations on project progress (problem statement, previous work, approach so far).
Tue Oct 13 (follows Monday schedule, but we will meet 1:40-3pm): randomized restarts, AAAI-98
Thur Oct 8: Relevance-bounded learning for SAT, AAAI-97
Tue Oct 6: Dynamic backtracking, JAIR 1993
Thur Oct 1: Anytime Window A*, IJCAI 2007. Sandip Aine visits.
Tue Sept 29: ILDS, AAAI 1996. Written project proposal due.
Mon Sept 28 (1:40-3): Beam-stack search, ICAPS 2005.
[ Thur Sept 24: moved to Sept 28 ]
[ Tues Sept 22: moved to Sept 14 ]
[ Thur Sept 17: moved to Aug 31 ]
Tue Sept 15: DTA* (section 5.3 especially). Discuss a draft project proposal at our individual meeting sometime between now and Sept 28!
Mon Sept 14 (1:40-3): Bugsy, IJCAI-07. In class, please say what project you're interested in so that you can form teams if necessary.
Thur Sept 10: D*lite, AAAI-02
Tue Sept 8: R*, AAAI-08
Thur Sept 3: Anytime Heuristic Search, JAIR 2007
Tue Sept 1: ARA*, NIPS 2004
Mon Aug 31: Here's the general information sheet. You should already have the Russell and Norvig textbook (2nd or 3rd edition). You might also want to review How to Read a Paper and The Task of the Referee.