CSSE 490: Swarm Intelligence

Swarm Intelligence is a fairly new field in Artificial Intelligence. Swarm intelligence investigates how to obtain complex behavior from the cooperation of individual agents with relatively simple behavior. A popular example is ant behavior. A colony of ants exhibits behavior that is more complex than that of an individual ant. While individual ants exhibit extremely simply behavior, the ant colony as a whole solves shortest path problems, a hard problem in CS.

This is a research course. The majority of the course work will be concerned with reading research papers and scientific books from CS, Biology, Physics, and other areas which study systems which fall under the general category of swarm intelligence or complex systems.

There will be a course project in which groups of students study a system of their choosing. This system will be analyzed and formalized with the tools of swarm intelligence. A prototype will be produced which implements the behavior formalized.

Prerequisites

CSSE 413 or permission of instructor.

Instructor

Mike Wollowski

Course Objectives

There are two main objectives for the course. They are:

To evaluate the power and limitation of Swarm Intelligence when it comes to solving problems.
To introduce students to academic research.

Grading

Participation (such as participation and preparedness for in-class discussions, participation in newsgroup discussions, willingness to scour for information, effort you put into the course, as evidenced by your journal, reading summaries)	20%
Presentations (probably two)	30%
Experiments/Projects	40%
Final Exam (A take home essay, to reflect on what you learned)	10%

I am asking you to keep a journal. In it, I would like you to keep records of the time you spent on class related activities as well as thoughts you had. Here are some sample entries:

Spent 35 minutes reading article xyz.
Though about possible applications of swarm intelligence. Wondered about applications for traffgic control and behavior of people in emergency situations (i.e. fire-exits)

Below is some information, indicating typical behavior for obtaining certain grades in this course. Naturally, this is subjective. However, I plan to give you ample opportunity to demonstrate your mastery and efforts in this course.

A Exceptional effort and deep understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
B Above average effort and above average understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
C Average effort and average understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
D Minimal effort and little understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
F No effort and no understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.

Academic Integrity

Please consult the CSSE department's Policy on Academic Honesty as a rough guideline on cooperation.

A	Exceptional effort and deep understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
B	Above average effort and above average understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
C	Average effort and average understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
D	Minimal effort and little understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.
F	No effort and no understanding of the power and limitations of swarm intelligence.