CSCI 370/941: Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Project guidelines:

• The guidelines provided here are intended to cover both the major and minor projects. You should view the minor project as a warm-up (and smaller scale) exercise to the major project. In general, the minor and major projects should involve distinct topics/ideas, unless you have approval from the instructor to pursue the same idea in both projects (this may happen, for instance, if you come up with a brilliantly innovative idea). The projects meant to be an exercise for you to do something creative with the techniques and technologies we are discussing in CSCI370/941. Your project should be designed to fit one of the following three categories:
  • Category One: You come up with an idea that makes an interesting and (at least somewhat) original contribution to the state-of-the-art. For instance, this could be a new variant of an existing agent programming language, or a new technique to support agent negotiation. You describe your ideas in a concise report of 10-15 pages (content matters, not size). If your idea is interesting/original enough, you don't need to write and experiment with code to prove validate your idea.
  • Category Two: You come up with a novel/original application of a technique that we have discussed in class. You describe your idea in the report, possibly including a system design for the proposed application domain. You write some code by way of a (at least partial) proof-of-concept implementation. Your implementation will not be expected to be as detailed and as comprehensive as in a Category Three project (described below). You include an explanation of the code in your report and attach the documented source code.
  • Category Three: You write code to implement and test some technique that we have studied in class (or is related to the course content) in a realistic/practical application. The code you write should be substantive (justifying 6 weeks of work). Your report will describe the implementation and explain why it is interesting. You will attach the documented source code to your report.
  Note that these categories are not presented in any specific order of importance. You may do well with a project in any category.
• The following are some interesting ideas for possible projects. Note that this list is not meant to be complete.
  • Agent technology applications: The UMBC AgentWeb is a good collection of resources on these topics. Botspot lists all kinds of agent applications.
    • Look at how agent building tools (such as those listed here) and agent programming languages (such as AgentSpeak) work. Are there interesting applications for these tools and languages ? Can you suggest improvements to any of these ? Can you invent new ones ?
    • Look at how agent technology is applied in e-commerce (see this page for a good collection of introductory papers). Can you think of new ways of building agents for e-commerce applications ? Can you think of new e-commerce related application domains for agent technology ? Can you build or improve upon an agent-based marketplace such as Kasbah ?
    • Look at how agent technology is being used to solve resource allocation problems (this page introduces market-oriented programming. Can you think of new applications for such techniques ?
    • Look at agent trading applications, such as those listed in the Trading Agent Competition webpage.
    • Look at applications of multi-agent systems, such as the fun Robocup competition (or our very own Robocup team - Gongeroos'99) or the more serious Robocup Rescue competition.
    • Look at commercial ventures such as Agentis and Agent Oriented Software. Can you think of new and innovative applications along these lines ?