CS/MAE 473/473R
AI Practicum / Robotics and Embodied AI 

Fall 2007

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Synopsis

CS/MAE 473 and 473R is a project course that complements CS472 "Foundations of Artificial Intelligence". Students will work in small teams to design, build, demonstrate and evaluate an intelligent system of their choice. This year the course offers two project variants: CS 473 is the traditional AI project that can be implemented in any problem domain (as in previous years). CS 473R, new this year, involves a robotics-based implementation, where students will use AI techniques to solve a robotics-related problem and demonstrate it on physical robots (provided). CS 473R will be complemented by a series of lectures on relevant topics and programming review classes for non-CS majors. 

Pre/Co-requisites

Students taking this class must be simultaneously taking CS 472 (or may have taken it earlier). Students are assumed to have some experience programming in a high level language such as C, C++, C#, Java, or Matlab. Non-CS majors enrolled in MAE473 who do not have extensive programming experience will be provided with a series of review lectures on data structures and algorithms. 

Websites

• Course website: http://web.mae.cornell.edu/CS473  (this page)
• Project guidelines and repository (wiki): http://fabathome.mae.cornell.edu/CS473/  (NetID required)

Time and location

• Robotics lectures will take place on some Tuesdays and Thursdays in Thurston 205, 3:35-4:25 according to the tentative schedule. 
• Individual team progress meetings will take place in Upson 217 according to a coordinated schedule.
• Review classes for non-CS majors will take place in Upson 217 TR 4:30-5:30 according to the tentative schedule. 
• The Robotics Studio in Upson 317  is open for students to perform experiments on physical robots . 
• Programming and development can also be done at the CS Undergraduate Lab (use CVS)

Staff

• Instructor: Hod Lipson, , 216 Upson Hall, (607) 255-1686 Office hours: TR 10-11, Hod.Lipson@cornell.edu
• TA: Yisong Yue, 4154 Upson Hall, (607) 255-9296 yyue@cs.cornell.edu  Office hours 5:30 - 6:30pm Tuesdays and Fridays, in Upson 317 or by appointment
• Hardware advisor: William (Bill) LaCava  wgl2@cornell.edu

Grading

This is a project course, with grading based on timely completion of project goals and intermediate milestones and reviews. 

• 10% Project proposals and plan
• 80% Project completion (implementation, demonstration and documentation)
• 10% Final project presentation

Text

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Russell and Norvig, Prentice-Hall, Inc., second edition

Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots, Siegwart and Nourbakhsh, MIT Press

Academic Integrity

This course follows the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student or team in this course for academic credit will be the student's own work. Violations of the rules (e.g. cheating, copying, non-approved collaborations) will not be tolerated.

Students with Disabilities

This course follows the Cornell University procedures for academic accommodations for students with disabilities. If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Cornell University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see the instructor immediately.

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Revised: September 04, 2007.