| Lectures: | Mon, Wed, Fri 1:00 - 1:50 pm in CAS 116 |
| Instructor: | Prof. Margrit Betke |
| Teaching Fellow: | Vitaly Ablavsky |
| Class web page: |
http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/betke/cs440 |
| Class mailing lists: |
cs440@cs.bu.edu and cs640@cs.bu.edu |
| Contact Information: |
| Staff | Phone | Office Hours | Office | |
| Margrit Betke | betke@cs.bu.edu | 353-8919 | Thu 2-4, Fri 2-3, and by appointment | MCS 286 |
| Vitaly Ablavsky | ablavsky@cs.bu.edu | 358-1139 | Tue 3-4, Wed 11-1 and by appointment | MCS 263 |
Seeing Me in My Office:
Please
feel free to stop by my office anytime. My office is in MCS 286 (111
Cummington St). I am generally around every day. I may be in
meetings, so the best time to reach me is during office hours. You
can also make an appointment by email. I'm happy to talk with you
about the course, research in computer vision, machine learning, and
pattern recognition, your plans for the future, or anything else.
Check out my
personal web page to get to know me a little.
Responsibilities of Teaching Fellow:
The Teaching Fellow is responsible for helping you out during his
office hours, grading the written homeworks, and designing and grading
the programming projects. Please contact him if you have questions
about your homework grades.
Our goal is to learn about computer systems that exhibit intelligent behavior, in particular, perceptual and robotic systems. Topics include human computer interfaces, computer vision, robotics, game playing, pattern recognition, knowledge representation, planning, and machine learning.
Prerequisites of CS440: Linear Algebra (CAS MA 242) or Geometric Algorithms (CAS CS 232), 1 Year Programming Experience (C, C++, or Java at CS112 level) or consent of instructor. Prerequisites of CS640: Same as above and BA background in Computer Science (e.g., Algorithms, Theory, Programming Languages).
Handouts: The updated course syllabus and most handouts are made available online. Check our course web page at least once a week for homework assignments and other information.
Textbook: Artificial Intelligence by Patrick H. Winston. Addison Wesley. ISBN: 0-201-53377-4.
Computing Environment: You will use the Computer Science Department's main server csa.bu.edu to download code and submit programming solutions. To get an account on csa, go to the Computer Science Department's Undergraduate Lab located at 730 Commonwealth Ave. You can work on various platforms in the lab there (and have immediate access to the computing staff). You can also access csa remotely using scp and ssh. I discourage the use of telnet and ftp due to security problems. Please add yourself to the appropriate course mailing list by typing csmail -a cs440 or csmail -a cs640 on csa. For the CS640 course projects, you can also use the Human-Computer Interface Lab in PSY 228A. If you want to use the lab for your project, talk to me first, since access to the lab is restricted.
Class Participation: Come to class and participate regularly. Reading the assigned texts and listening in class will only give you a "passive understanding" of the material. I encourage discussions in class to help you acquire an "active understanding" of the material so that you can evaluate existing computer systems critically and learn to develop your own creative solutions.
Reading: To prepare for each class, you will be asked to read textbook chapters and journal papers, and explore web sites. You can achieve a good understanding and appreciation of the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence if you read the assigned texts thoroughly.
Homework: The homework includes four programming assignments and several written problem sets. The due dates are listed below. Programs and reports must be submitted electronically. Guidelines for submission are provided with each assignment. Written homework must be handed in at the beginning of class. Late solutions will be levied a late penalty of 20% per day (up to three days). After three days, no credit will be given.
Project: A project is required for students
enrolled in CS640. You can propose your own project topic or use one
of my project suggestions.
I will discuss your project's scope, design, and presentation with you
in my office hours and provide guidance throughout the semester. Read
the project guidelines
carefully. You may work by yourself or in a group. You will present
the final project in class at the end of the term. In the
presentation, you should introduce the topic of the work, give a
problem definition, explain the long-term and short-term goals, and
discuss the motivation. Explain the algorithms and report on the
experiments and results. How do they relate to previous work? Are they
satisfactory? What are your conclusions? Give a critical
evaluation. Is this promising work? Has it been successful? What are
the limitations?
See me in my office hours to discuss your project
well in advance of your presentation. With some additional work, you
may be able to use your project to fulfill the project requirement in
the BA/MA and MA programs. You may use the Human-Computer
Interface Laboratory in PSY 228A to develop your project.
Colloquia: Students enrolled in CS440 and CS 640 are encouraged to attend the CS Department Colloquia. In addition to the CS Department Colloquium Series, you may also check out talks in other departments and at other universities. A partial list includes: BU College of Engineering Seminar Calendar , CSAIL lab at MIT , MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science , Northeastern College of Computer and Information Science , Tufts Department of Computer Science Colloquium, UMass Boston Department of Computer Science. Students enrolled in CS 640 must attend three talks on subjects related to Artificial Intelligence and write a summary on each talk. The one-page review should give a problem definition, summarize the algorithms and results, and briefly explain how the work relates to material discussed in class. Reviews must be submitted at the beginning of class on the dates listed in the syllabus. Reviews should be checked for typographical and grammatical errors. Reviews that are late or contain errors will not receive the grade "A."
Exams: There will be two exams on the material discussed in the class and practiced with homeworks. The exams will be quite easy for students who come to class, participate in our discussions, and keep up with homework assignments and programming projects. The date of the midterm exam is Friday, October 19, 2007. The final exam will focus on material discussed in the second part of the course, but may also test earlier material. You are allowed to use one double-sided page of notes in each exam.
Grading Policy: Your final grade will be determined roughly as follows:
| CS 440 | CS 640 | |
| Midterm exam | 20% | 20% |
| Final exam | 30% | 30% |
| Programming Assignments | 20% | 10% |
| Written Problem Sets | 20% | 10% |
| Class participation | 10% | 10% |
| Project and presentation | 0% | 15% |
| Talk reviews | 0% | 5% |
You are encouraged to collaborate on the solution of the homework. If you do, you must code up your solutions on your own and acknowledge your collaborators. Each student must submit his or her own electronic version of the solutions. CS640 students may request an exception to this rule for their final project. If you use algorithms or code that are not your own original work and that were not provided in class or discussed in the textbook, you must give a detailed acknowledgment of your source.
Cheating and plagiarism are not worthy of Boston University students. We expect you to abide by the rule stated above and the standards of academic honesty and computer ethics policy described in http://www.bu.edu/computing/ethics/ .
Artificial Intelligence is an elective course that will introduce you to an exciting topic in computer science. It should be fun and not too much of a struggle for you. Make sure that you have had the prerequisites. Depending on your level of programming experience and/or mathematics background, the course may be challenging for you. If you do not understand the material, ask for help immediately. Ask questions in class. If one student is confused about something, then maybe others are also confused and grateful that someone asked. Please come and see me or Vitaly for help or send us email. Our task is to help you learn a very interesting topic.
Course Schedule
| Dates | Topics | Readings | Homework | Programming Projects |
| WF 9/5-7 | Introduction - What is AI? Smart Rooms, The Kids Room | Bobick | . | . |
| M-M 9/10-9/17 | Computer Vision (e.g., face detection, binocular and photometric stereo). Last day to ADD class: M 9/17 | Ch. 27 | H1 out (9/12) | P1 out (9/12, 1 1/2 weeks) |
| WF 9/19-21 | Neural Nets: Introduction | Ch. 22 | H1 due (9/19) , H2 out | P1 due (9/21) |
| MWF 9/24-28 | Neural Nets: Backpropagation | Ch. 22 | H2 due (9/28) | P2 out (9/21, 2 weeks) |
| MWF 10/1-5, T 10/9, W 10/10 | Applications of Neural Nets, Face Recognition, Markov Models, Hidden Markov Models with Discrete
Observations Last Day to DROP Classes (without a 'W' grade) or change from Credit to Audit: Tu 10/9 |
Sirovich, Turk, Rabiner | H3 out (10/5) | P2 due (10/5), P3 out (10/5, 3 weeks) |
| FMW 10/12-17 | HMMs with Continuous Output
Densities Applications of HMMs: Speech and ASL |
Rabiner, Vogler | H3 due (10/12), CS640:Review-1due (10/10) | . |
| F 10/19 | Midterm Exam | . | . | . |
| MWF 10/22-26 | Search Techniques:
Branch-and-Bound, A*, Robot Path Planning Last Day to DROP Classes (with a 'W' grade): F 11/9 |
Ch. 5 | . | P3 due (10/26) |
| MW 10/29-31, FM 11/2-5 |
Game Playing: Minimax, Alpha-Beta | Ch. 6 | . | P4
out (11/2, 2 1/2 weeks) |
| WFW 11/7-14 | Expert Systems No class on M 11/12. |
Ch. 7 | H4 out (11/9), CS640: Review-2 due (11/7), | . |
| F 11/16, M 11/19, M 11/26 | Logic, Planning
No class on WF 11/21,23, Thanksgiving Holiday |
Ch. 13 and Ch. 15 | H4 due (11/16) | P4 due (11/21) |
| WF 11/28-30 | Planning, Natural Language Processing | Handout of Slides | H5 out (12/5) | . |
| MWF 12/3-7 | Robotics, Human-Computer Interfaces | Handout of Slides | CS 640: Review 3 due (12/7) | . |
| MW 12/10-12 | CS 640 Course Projects | . | H5 due (12/12) | . |
| W 12/19, 12:30-2:30 pm | Final Exam | . | . | CS 640 projects due (12/17). |
The syllabus may change depending on the time spent on different topics and whether new or alternative subjects are discussed. Suggestions are welcome!
Solutions to the written homework are handed out in class. If you miss them, you can find them on the shelf marked "CS 440/640" located across MCS 135.
Programming Assignment results,
Game Tournament Results
Check out http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/betke/links.html if you need ideas for your class project, if you are looking for a job, or if you are interested in research related to AI and computer vision. You will find a list of links to conferences, journals, research groups, and companies.
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