Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (FAI) Group

Core Lecture: Artificial Intelligence

Organization. Successful participation in the course yields 9 ECTS.

The course consists of oral lectures, 2*90 minutes per week, as well as exercises that will be supervised in tutorial groups (90 minutes/week).

The lectures will be held Mondays 10:15 -- 11:45, and Tuesdays 8:30 -- 10:00, in Guenter-Hotz-Hoersaal (E2 2).

All lectures and tutorials will be held in English.

The lectures will be given by Prof. Dr. Joerg Hoffmann. The tutorials will be supervised by Dr. Peter Kissmann. The tutors are: Ilya Grishchenko, Evica Ilieva, Alexander Kampmann, Vikram Mehta, Frank Nedwed, and Sarah Schaeffer (see the Chapter 0 Post-Handouts for their email addresses).

Exercises and discussion of technical questions will be organized via our Moodle pages.

Abstract. This course explores key concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including heuristic search algorithms, adversarial search, constraint satisfaction problems, propositional and first-order reasoning, the automatic generation of heuristic functions in planning, and reasoning under uncertainty. We will highlight how these concepts are used in a variety of AI applications; in particular, guest lectures by researchers from DFKI are anticipated. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to write Bachelor and Master theses in AI. This core lecture is also the prerequisite for advanced courses such as Automatic Planning, Intelligent User Interfaces, and Semantic Web. Interested students will have the unique opportunity to participate in exciting AI research projects in the FAI group or at DFKI.

Exercises. The exercises will involve applying the introduced concepts and algorithms to examples, and leading simple proofs. Solutions can be submitted in groups of 3 authors, all of which must be registered into the same tutorial group.

Registration for the tutorials is CLOSED. If you want to switch your toturial group still, you need to find a switching partner. We recommend to do so using the Moodle "Technical Discussion" section as a billboard. Once you did find a switching partner, please contact the tutors of both groups involved.

Here is the final schedule of tutorials:

• Tutorial 1: Mon 16:15-17:45; E1 3, HS 001; Vikram Mehta. (Exception: Mon May 20 is a public holiday. That instance of the group has been moved to Tue May 21, 15:00--16:30, in E1 1, room 3.06.)
• Tutorial 2: Tue 14:15-15:45; E1 3, SR 014; Alexander Kampmann.
• Tutorial 3: Tue 14:15-15:45; E1 3, SR 107; Evica Ilieva.
• Tutorial 4: Wed 14:15-15:45; E1 3, HS 002; Sarah Schaeffer.
• Tutorial 5: Wed 14:15-15:45; E2 1, 001; Vikram Mehta.
• Tutorial 6: Wed 16:15-17:45; E1 3, HS 001; Sarah Schaeffer.
• Tutorial 7: Wed 16:15-17:45; E2 1, 007; Frank Nedwed.
• Tutorial 8: Fri 14:15-15:45; E1 3, SR 107; Ilya Grishchenko.
• Tutorial 9: Fri 14:15-15:45; E1 3, SR 015; Evica Ilieva.

Each exercise sheet will be handed out on a Monday (week X), via download in our Moodle pages. Submission of solutions will be in paper form only, just before the start of the lecture, on Monday week X+1, in the lecture hall. (Attention: You must comply with the submission rules as stated on each sheet, else 3 points will be subtracted from your score.) The tutorials about each sheet will be in week X+2.

Here's a detailed list of the release and submission dates, for each sheet (note the gap in June, during the DFKI Guest Lectures):

• Sheet 1: Hand-out 29.04.13; Submission 06.05.13.
• Sheet 2: Hand-out 06.05.13; Submission 13.05.13.
• Sheet 3: Hand-out 13.05.13; Submission 21.05.13. (Note: 20.05. is a public holiday)
• Sheet 4: Hand-out 20.05.13; Submission 27.05.13.
• Sheet 5: Hand-out 27.05.13; Submission 03.06.13.
• Sheet 6: Hand-out 03.06.13; Submission 10.06.13.
• Sheet 7: Hand-out 10.06.13; Submission 24.06.13.
• Sheet 8: Hand-out 24.06.13; Submission 01.07.13.
• Sheet 9: Hand-out 01.07.13; Submission 08.07.13.
• Sheet 10: Hand-out 08.07.13; Submission 15.07.13.

Exam and final grade. There will be a written exam at the end of the course. 50 percent of the points from the exercises are needed for admission to the exam. The final grade will be determined based on the performance in the exam. A second, slightly harder, exam will be held end September/beginning October. The better grade of the two exams counts.

The first exam will take place on Monday, July 29, 9:45 -- 12:00. The exam will be written in Guenter-Hotz-Hoersaal (E2 2); depending on the number of students, we will also use HS 002 (E1 3). All students must be at Guenter-Hotz-Hoersaal at 9:45.

The second exam will take place on Wednesday, September 25, 14:00 -- 16:15. The exam will be written in Guenter-Hotz-Hoersaal (E2 2); depending on the number of students, we will also use HS 002 (E1 3). All students must be at Guenter-Hotz-Hoersaal at 13:45.

Course Material. There are two kinds of slides, pre-handouts and post-handouts. Pre-handouts do not contain the answers to questions asked during the lecture sessions, and do not contain the details for examples worked during the lecture sessions. The post-handouts do contain all this, and correct any bugs. The pre-handouts are made available one day before the lecture sessions on each chapter, the post-handouts are made available directly after the lecture sessions on a chapter are finished.

Most of the course follows the standard AI text book by Russel and Norvig (RN). HOWEVER, several chapters do NOT follow that book one-to-one, and some do not follow it at all. The ground truth throughout the course are the results as stated in the post-handouts. A few details about the relevant chapters of RN are given in the table at the end of this page, as well as at the end of each topic in the post-handouts.

Course Overview. The provisional outline of the course is specified in the following calendar and table: