Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is about creating algorithms to perform tasks in a way that we believe is intelligent. AI & Robotics is about creating algorithms to make robots perform such tasks. Modern AI & Robotics algorithms play games (e.g. chess), prove theorems (e.g. verification), discover patterns in data (e.g. explanations), analyze complex sequences (e.g. DNA), make ``life or death’’ decisions (e.g. matching organs to patients), optimize distributions (e.g. food, refugees, housings), drive cars (e.g. Tesla), play soccer, etc. 

This course has three components: lectures, tutorials and lab exercises. The lectures will introduce selected basic topics such as search, game playing, decision making, planning, machine learning and probabilistic reasoning. The tutorials will allow students to apply algorithms on simple ``toy’’ examples. The lab exercises will provide to the students the opportunity to develop a small project in some area of AI: learning, planning, theorem proving, etc. Students who complete the course will have an understanding of some of the fundamental methods and algorithms of AI, and an appreciation of how they can be applied to interesting practical problems.