Mark Humphrys - CA300 - practical
  The Tyrrell world: The World-Wide-Mind:

CA300 practical

The World-Wide-Mind

The practical is based on the "World-Wide-Mind" project.

Tyrrell's world

In this practical, the World server will be an animal-behaviour problem called "Tyrrell's world".

The "Tyrrell's world" World server is online at w2mind.computing.dcu.ie

Graphical view of Tyrrell's World.
Note that the creature sees only part of the world.
Also it does not see this image. Rather it sees a text description of the world (see following). 



	perceivedFatShortage:0.5994355682777777;
      perceivedCarbohydrateShortage:0.6003002752721399;
      perceivedProteinShortage:0.5970390398266352;
      perceivedWaterShortage:0.6010274482908156;
      perceivedAnimalLowTemperature:0.0;
      perceivedAnimalHighTemperature:0.0;
      perceivedCellLowTemperature:0.0038469630420412924;
      perceivedCellHighTemperature:0.0;  mateCourted:0.0;
      perceivedAnimalCleanliness:0.5021354162694708;
      nightProximity:0.002006389150289807;  animalVariance:0.0;
      distanceFromDen:0.0;
      foodPerceptionStimulus:[0.0,0.1,0.1,0.0,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1];
      foodMemoryStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      waterPerceptionStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      waterMemoryStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      shelterPerceptionStimulus:[1.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      shadePerceptionStimulus:[0.7,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      predator1PerceptionStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      predator2PerceptionStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      dangerousPlacePerceptionStimulus1:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      irrelevantAnimalPerceptionStimulus1:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      matePerceptionStimulus:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      denPerceptionStimulus:[1.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      denMemoryStimulus:[1.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      timeSinceLastScan:0.0;  distanceToCover:0.0;
      timeSinceLastPredator:1.0;  animalHealth:1.0;
      animalPermanentInjury:0.0;
      dangerousPlacePerceptionStimulus2:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];
      irrelevantAnimalPerceptionStimulus2:[0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0];

The creature senses the state of the World in text format as above.

How to run a Mind in a World

How to solve the problem

The "creature" in Tyrrell's world has multiple conflicting goals. It needs to stay alive, find food and water, avoid predators and dangerous places, hide and sleep at night, keep clean, mate, etc. Your job is to give it a "Mind".

When we "run" the Mind in the World, we repeatedly ask the World to describe itself by sending it a "Get State" message, then we ask the Mind what to do by sending it a "Get Action" message, then we execute the action by sending the World server a "Take Action" message.


You can:

  1. Simply run one of the existing Mind servers in the World, and see how well you score.

  2. Construct a new Mind offline, and run that. This may query the online World for state, or may query an offline copy of the World. This program cannot be run by other people.

  3. Construct a new Mind "server" online, and run that. This will run in the online World. This program can then be run by other people.

  4. Construct a new Mind server yourself, online or offline, which calls an existing online Mind server. The WWM architecture encourages this, to encourage re-use of other people's Minds. This is the whole point of the WWM (also here). This is called a MindM server. It may add some actions of its own, or not.

  5. The MindM server may call multiple online Mind servers, and choose between their multiple suggested actions in order to get the action to take. This is called a MindAS server.

  6. Sub-goal only: You may decide to specialise on only one sub-goal, or a small set of sub-goals. e.g. Create the best food-finder. Your friend creates the best predator-avoider. A third friend then combines these ultra-specialists into a MindAS system.

3rd year AI practical

The practical is to:
  1. Write a program to drive the agent in the "Tyrrell's world" problem and score well on the scoreboard, using any method (hand-coded, search, learning, evolution, etc.).
  2. You should write it in Java using the instructions at: How to write a Mind.
  3. From the AI point of view, this illustrates a problem with an unpredictable world, a massive state-space, multiple conflicting goals, and no known optimal solution.
  4. For this practical, your final program must be a MindM server or a MindAS server. That is, it must call another Mind or Minds as part of its deliberations at some point. It may ignore their ideas for what action to take in favour of its own, but there must exist at least one state of the World where it asks another Mind what action it would take. Example: 
    if (predator visible)
  ask Mind73 what to do
  if answer=n ignore it and override with my own action
  else do whatever Mind73 suggests
else (no predator visible)
  don't ask any other Mind, take my own action
  5. Get your score onto the scoreboard.
  6. Write up how you did it, including the full commented source code of all programs involved.
    (Hint: Colour printout in landscape mode is normally the best way to print out code.)
  7. You should also document your Mind online in an index.html file. How much detail you explain online is up to you, but you should explain something about what the Mind does. The paper document for handing up should contain full source code. The online documentation does not have to.
  8. Give me a tidy, bound write-up on paper by the deadline.
  9. Make sure these are written on your submission:
    1. Course: CA300
    2. Lecturer: Mark Humphrys
    3. Your name
    4. Your student number
  10. Either (a) give this to me at a lecture, or (b) drop it into the project box in L114 that has my name and "CA300" on it.

Notes:

  1. You may have any number of submissions.
  2. You can repeatedly run your mind online with the client to improve your score on the scoreboard. Since it is a probabilistic world, any single run may be "unlucky". So run it many times with the client. The single best run will be recorded on the scoreboard.
  3. Please use your proper name (no nicknames), or scores will NOT be properly credited to you.
  4. You are encouraged to discuss this with fellow students on the CA300 discussion board:

Marking

You will get marks for lots of things. This will be a bit of a free-for-all, including marks for scoring, marks for coding, marks for putting things online in different ways, marks for the write-up, marks for re-use, marks for being re-used, and even marks for finding bugs in the system.

All I ask is that your write-up is honest and explains what you did. I will decide the exact score at the end:


  1. You will get marks for performing well on the scoreboard.
  2. You will get marks for performing well on some specialised sub-goal.
  3. You will get marks for the write-up.

  4. Just to say explicitly about the write-up: You will get marks for good analysis of how the world and your mind, or other minds, work. Even if you find a bug in the world, write it up and you can get marks. If you find "bugs" (or at least strange features) in the world, isolate them, replicate them and write it up properly and you will get marks for such analysis.

  5. Mind server
    1. You will get marks for writing your own Mind server, offline or online. But you must document how it works and why it scored the points it did. If any dishonesty is detected in your write-up you will fail the project.
    2. You will get a lot of marks for using search, learning, evolution, or any other interesting algorithm, in your server.
    3. You will get a lot of marks for using any method other than the standard Java toolkit submission (e.g. other programming languages, offline programs, your own online server, etc.).

  6. MindM server
    1. You will get marks for a Mind server that re-uses an existing Mind server. i.e. A MindM server. The WWM is all about this kind of re-use. It's meant to be this way. But you must document how you did this. If any dishonesty is detected in your write-up you will fail the project.
    2. You may re-use your classmates' Mind servers, your own Mind servers, and our pre-written Mind servers (and any other Mind servers you can find).

  7. MindAS server
    1. You will get a lot of marks for re-using multiple other Mind servers, and having some kind of "server selection" algorithm. i.e. A MindAS server.

  8. Finding bugs
    1. You will get marks for finding bugs in the system, security flaws, etc. Write it all up properly. Please tell me about these bugs as you go along, as well as writing them up in the report.

Your program will be archived

By default your program will be used in our WWM research project, which aims to find ways of building up complex Minds composed of the works of multiple authors. There is no commercial aspect. This is all free and open software.

By default:

  1. Your program will go into an ongoing WWM library of Mind servers for the Tyrrell world.
  2. Your program may be online forever at our site.
  3. Your program may be re-used in larger, multi-Mind systems.
  4. These will be written up in scientific papers, like our paper at the 7th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior in Edinburgh in 2002.
  5. If your Mind is ever re-used like this, you will be fully credited, including a credit in any published papers.
  6. Previously, we discussed some students' Minds in our paper: at the 8th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior in Los Angeles in 2004.
I expect that most of you will like the idea of your clever solution ending up a component in a larger, ongoing system, with your name credited in various papers.

On the other hand, if you do not want this to happen, that's fine. There is no problem, and no penalty. I do not even need to know what your reasons are. Just send me a blank email with the subject "NO ARCHIVE".


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