Notes on CMSC 477/677 Agents Project Requirements
Spring 2007
Proposal
If you plan to work in a group, the group may submit a single
proposal.
Your proposal (due on February 20) should:
- be about 1-2 pages long.
- indicate which agent architecture you plan to
use.
- include a short (1-2 paragraph, or more)
description of the application domain you plan to model.
- explain (1 paragraph, or more) why you think this is
the application and architecture are a good fit for each other.
- provide some preliminary thoughts on
how you will go about modeling the domain. In
particular, will you need to do some extra work to create an
environment that your agent can perceive and act upon? What kinds of
decision rules or plan libraries will your agent need to include?
- include a bibliography of at least 3-5 resources you have found on
the architecture and/or application domain. (This bibliography should
go beyond the papers we read in class.)
Project/Demonstration
Project groups only need to give one demonstration, but every
student should participate equally in the presentation.
- Project demonstrations will be scheduled in 20-minute (individual)
or 30-minute (group) slots, during the
week after spring break (i.e., the week of March 27).
- Your demonstration should be well organized, and should include an
explanation of your application, a demonstration of how it works, and
a discussion of your findings. (What was easy? What was hard? What
worked well, and what didn't?)
Report
Each student must write and submit their own project report, even
if they worked in a group on the project.
- A draft report will be due before spring break (on March 15).
This report should be reasonably complete in its description of the
application domain and your approach to implementing it.
- I realize
that you may not yet have your final project working at the time the
draft is due, so rather than a discussion of findings, you may include
a discussion of what you hope or expect to find.
- Your final report (due April 3)
should be well organized, and should include an
explanation of your application and a detailed disussion of how you
developed your application within your chosen architecture.
(Pictures, diagrams, and screenshots are always good.)
- Your report should also include
a discussion of your findings. What was easy? What was hard? What
worked well, and what didn't? Empirical results (e.g., scalability
results with running times for different size problems) are welcome,
but are not required.
- Students enrolled in 477 should have a bibliography of at least
3-5 papers on the architecture and/or application domain. These
papers should be cited appropriately in your discussion (e.g., in
talking about the relevant functionality (or lack thereof) in your
chosen architecture).
- Students enrolled in 677 should have a more extensive
bibliography, of 5-10 papers on the architecture, application domain,
and other related work. For example, if other people have worked on a
similar application domain, you might discuss how they have attempted
to solve the problem. Alternatively, you might cite some of the other
architectures, and discuss whether it would be more or less difficult
to implement your chosen application using those architectures.
- There is no specific page requirement. I would expect that
students in 477 would submit reports ranging from 4-8 pages, and that
students in 677 would submit reports ranging from 6-12 pages, but
these are just ballpark estimates. What I really care about is the
quality of your insights about your chosen application domain and your
chosen architecture.