AI Assignment

Learner's Name:

Learner's ID.

Date handed-in.:

Plagiarism Statement
I declare that, apart from properly referenced quotations, this report is my own work and contains no plagiarism; it has not been
submitted previously for any other assessed unit on this or other courses.

Learner's Signature:

Date:

Q1. Maze Search

In this assignment, you will be in charge of a "Pacman" agent that needs to find paths through mazes, both to
reach a particular location and to collect food efficiently. You will build general search algorithms and apply
them to different scenarios.
As stated in the beginning of the course, you are
free to use any high-level programming language
you are comfortable with. This includes (but is not
limited to) Java, C++ and MATLAB. The focus is on
problem solving, not programming, and the grading
will primarily be based on the quality of your
solutions and your analysis, as evidenced by your
written report. You have the option of working in
groups of up to three people.

Basic path finding

To begin with, you will consider the problem of finding a path through a maze from a given start state to a
given goal state. This scenario is illustrated in the figure above, where the Pacman icon indicates the start
position and the goal state is a dot. The maze layout will be given to you in a simple text format, where '%'
stands for walls, 'P' for the starting position, and '.' for the goal. For this part of the assignment, all step costs
are equal to one. Implement the following search algorithms for different paths available:
Depth-first search;
Breadth-first search;
Greedy best-first search;
A* search.
End of Q1

Submission Due Date: 15th Mar 2013. Demonstrate execution + Hard copy 500 words (Max)

Q2. Review Report on Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing and

Genetic Algorithms
End of Q2

Submission Due Date: 24th Mar 2013. Hard copy not exceeding 800 words with figures

Q3. Driving in Circles

A car agent wants to drive k times around a circular track of length L, then park where it started. Its initial speed is 0, but the agent
can move at the integer speeds in [0, V]. At each time step, the agent can coast (not change speed), accelerate (increase speed by
1), or decelerate (decrease speed by 1). Once an action is selected, the agent then moves a number of squares equal to its NEW
adjusted speed. For example, if the first action is to accelerate, the agent will end up one square to the right with a new speed of 1.
The agents goal is to find a plan, which parks it (at zero speed) where it began after circling the track k times, using as few
actions (time steps) as possible.

a. Describe the state space, start state and goal test for this problem
b. What is the maximum branching factor of this problem? Briefly justify your answer.
c. Is the number of spaces left to go an admissible heuristic? Why or why not?
d. State and justify a non-trivial, admissible heuristic which is not the number of spaces left to go.
e. Is breadth-first search guaranteed to be optimal for this problem?
f. Will depth-first search be complete for this problem? Briefly justify your answer.

Q4. Technical paper on Knowledge reasoning & First Order Logic

Plagiarism and Collusion
Any act of plagiarism and collusion will be seriously dealt with according to the regulations. In this context the
definition and scope of plagiarism are presented below:
Plagiarism occurs when a student misrepresents, as his/her own work, the work, written or otherwise, of any other
person (including another student) or of any institution. Examples of forms of plagiarism include 1:
1

the verbatim (word for word) copying of anothers work without appropriate and correctly presented
acknowledgement;
2 the close paraphrasing of anothers work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation,
without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement;
3 unacknowledged quotation of phrases from anothers work;
4 The deliberate and detailed presentation of anothers concept as ones own.
All types of work submitted by students are covered by this definition, including, written work, diagrams, designs,
engineering drawings and pictures.
Collusion occurs when, unless with official approval (e.g. in the case of group projects), two or more students
consciously collaborate in the preparation and production of work which is ultimately submitted by each in an
identical, or substantially similar, form and/or is represented by each to be the product of his or her individual efforts.
Collusion also occurs where there is unauthorized co-operation between a student and another person in the
preparation and production of work, which is presented as the students own.
Extension and Late Submission

If an extension is necessary for a valid reason, requests can me made before 3 days prior to submission. Please note
that the lecturers do not extend the assignment deadlines and therefore do not ask them to award a coursework
extension.