Lecture Artificial Life (2V+2Ü) (MA-INF 4201)

Dr. Nils Goerke

Mondays 14 - 16 HS2

Lecture hall HS 2, HSZ, Campus Poppelsdorf

Start: Monday 1. April 2019, 14:00

Link to the Exercises

Results from resit exam are in BASIS

Exam inspection is scheduled for:

Wednesday 6.11.19, 14:00-15:00, room 0.042

Thursday 7.11.19, 16:15-17:00, room 0.042

Friday 8.11.19, 11:00-12:00, room 0.042

Friday 8.11.19, 14:00-15:00, room 0.042

Please make sure you have documents with a photo with you, to chek your identity (identity card, or passport, or drivers license, ...).

It is recommended to go to the exam inspection and recieve feedback, especially if you have failed in this attempt.

Content :

This lecture is part of the intelligent systems track of the master programme "Computer Science".

The lecture gives an overview over the most prominent aspects of artificial life research from the foundations, including strong and weak artificial life, via the most prominent topics of artificial life to the state of the art and to current applications.

The following topics will be presented and discussed in detail:
Cellular automata, Conway's "Game of Life", mechanisms to structure development and pattern formation, basics of nonlinear systems, Lindenmeyer Systems, evolutionary methods, and genetic algorithms, reinforcement learning, adaptive behaviour, self-organising criticality, swarming behaviour, swarm intelligence, ant algorithms, particle swarm optimization.

Assignment sheets and Exercises groups on a voluntary basis:

The exercises are arranged to intensify the work with the research topics presented in the lecture. You will get weekly paper-and-pencil assignments that are designed to be worked on in two person groups and completed within one week. Your results of the assignments shall be presented and discussed during the exercise group to practice and improve your oral presentation skills. You should be capable of presenting your solutions during the exercise groups. The paper and pencil assignments are accompanied by small programming tasks to be completed using individually implemented programms and stat of the art simulation tools.
Reaching at least half of the possible points from the programming and paper and pencil assignments is a good possibility to rate your performence.

Exercises groups

The schedule for the exercise groups is not yet fixed.
The exact arrangement for the groups will be negotiated in the second lecture on Monday 8, March 2019.

Written Examination:

There will be a 100 minutes written examination, covering all topics from the lecture and the assignment sheets. In general, working carefully on the assignments is a good preparation for the exam. 

Literature:

Unfortunately no text-book is at the moment available for this module.
Most necessary literature will be named during the lecture.

C. Adami: Introduction to Artificial Life, Springer-Verlag New York, 1998
D. Floreano and C. Mattiussi: Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, The MIT Press, 2008.
E.Bonabeau, M.Dorigo, G.Theraulaz: Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems, Oxford University Press.