UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
The Department of Computer Science & Engineering

STUART C. SHAPIRO: CSE 716

Instructor:

Prof. Stuart C. Shapiro, 326 Bell Hall, 645-3180 ext. 125, shapiro@cse.buffalo.edu
Office Hours: M 3:30 - 4:30, W 10:00-10:50, Th 2:00 - 2:50. Or make an appointment via email. See my schedule for my available times.

A participant list with email addresses is available from UB machines.

Description:

We will study various architectures and control languages for cognitive robots (cognitive agents), and every participant will implement at least one cognitive robot/agent over the course of the semester.

"Research in Cognitive Robotics is concerned with the theory and the implementation of robots that reason, act and perceive in changing, incompletely known, unpredictable environments. Such robots must have higher level cognitive functions that involve reasoning, for example, about goals, actions, when to perceive and what to look for, the cognitive states of other agents, time, collaborative task execution, etc. In short, Cognitive Robotics is concerned with integrating reasoning, perception and action within a uniform theoretical and implementation framework." [From the description of the AAAI 1998 Fall Symposium on Cognitive Robotics]

Participants will be able to use any of several cognitive robot simulation environments:

• the Crystal Space environment developed by John Santore as part of his Ph.D. dissertation research.
• a virtual reality drama, called The Trial, The Trail being developed by Prof. Josephine Anstey and colleagues.
• A Java version of Karel the Robot Prof. Shapiro is adapting from the version Byron Weber Becker has developed for his new text Robots: Learning to Program with Java.

We also expect a hardware magellan robot to arrive in the department near the beginning of the Fall semester, and to be available to the participants of this seminar. It is described in the Magellan manual. In addition to the base robot, we will have a pan-tilt-zoom color camera and a wireless network card.

Readings: Click here for the list of readings.

Grading:

This seminar will abide by the Departmental policy that all seminars are graded on an S/U basis. To earn a grade of S, a student must do the assigned readings, participate in class discussions, do a significant implementation of a cognitive robot/agent, and describe that implementation in an acceptable paper.

Academic policies:

This course will abide by the Departmental Academic Integrity policies and procedures,
and the Departmental Incomplete policy.

The short versions are:

• all work turned in with your name on it must be your own work;
• unless something disastrous and unavoidable happens to you, you will not receive an incomplete in this course.

Last modification: 7/25/03.