CSCI 446
Artificial Intelligence
Fall 2018

Montana Tech
Computer Science & Software Engineering

Schedule  |  Assignments  |  Course Syllabus  |  Course Project Information  |  Moodle

ASSIGNMENT 1

The goal of this assignment is to have you think through representing the environment of a problem, appropriate agent architecture, and the state space for the problem.

A farmer is on one shore of a river and has with him a fox, a chicken, and a sack of grain. He has a boat that fits one object besides himself. In the presence of the farmer nothing gets eaten, but if left without the farmer, the fox will eat the chicken, and the chicken will eat the grain. How can the farmer get all three possessions across the river safely?

Part 1: Agents and Environments
We've discussed types and characteristics of environments. What are the properties of the task environment for this problem? Is it:

  • Fully or Partially Observable?                  
  • Deterministic or Stochastic?         
  • Episodic or Sequential?                
  • Static or Dynamic?             
  • Discrete or Continuous?               
  • Single-Agent or Multi-Agent?       
  • Known or Unknown?

    • If you had to make any assumptions in answering the above questions, list those. Based on your answers, what type of agent architecture is appropriate to solve the problem and why?

    How would you represent the state information such that you can keep track of the conditions and move from the initial state to the goal state? In other words, what level of abstraction is appropriate? In your representation, what is the initial state, and what is the goal state?

    Part 2: State Space
    Draw the complete state space for this problem, not allowing loops back to a previous state. Include the actions available from each state to both legal and illegal states. Illegal states will end up being a termination state, though not the goal. How many solutions are there? What is the cost of each solution if each action is given a cost of 1?

    Submission. Submit your assignment, if done electronically, via Moodle. Alternatively, you may turn in your handwritten assignment by the due date either to my mailbox or to me directly.

    Page last updated: August 17, 2018