CMSC 722, AI Planning - Fall 2009

Syllabus

Time and location: Tues/Thurs, 3:30pm to 4:45pm, CSIC room 2120

Home page: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2009/cmsc722

Discussion forum: web site and RSS feed. Please subscribe.

Instructor: Dana Nau

  • Office: Room 3241 AVW
  • Office hours: after class until about 5:30pm; other times by appointment
  • Telephone: 301-405-2684
  • Email: nau & cs.umd.edu      to send email, change & to @

Prerequisite: CMSC 421 (Intro to Artificial Intelligence) or equivalent, or permission of instructor. You don't need to know everything in CMSC 421, but you should know most of the following:

  • state-space search, A*, AND/OR graphs
  • first-order logic, unification, resolution, Horn clauses
  • basic complexity theory (big-O and Θ, nondeterministic algorithms, P and NP, NP-hardness, NP-completeness)
  • mathematical maturity (proof by contradiction, mathematical induction, how to do proofs that involve quantifiers)

Textbook: Ghallab, Nau, and Traverso. Automated Planning: Theory and Practice. Morgan Kaufmann, May 2004.

Course content: shown on the home page.

Homework: I'll assign several sets of homework problems, but won't grade them. About a week after each assignment, I'll present the answers in class.

Term project: To be done in groups of 2 or 3 people, on a topic chosen by the group

  • Like a miniature version of the research projects that most of you will need to do repeatedly throughout your career:
    • a written term-project proposal;
    • an in-class presentation of your proposal;
    • a report on the results of your project;
    • an in-class presentation of your report.

Exams: A midterm exam in class as shown on the class page, and a final exam on the date and time specified in the university exam schedule.

Both exams will be open book and open notes. A few days before each exam, I'll do an in-class review of the material we've covered, to help you prepare for the exam.

Grading:

  • The term project will count for 30% of your grade.
  • The two exams will count for 70% of your grade. When you take the final exam, I'll let you choose among any of the following:
    • 20% for the midterm and 50% for the final;
    • 30% for the midterm and 40% for the final (roughly proportional to the length of each exam);
    • 40% for the midterm and 30% for the final.