Pac-Man® Shant K. Karakashian CSE 476/876 Optional Course Project 1

Introduction Pac-Man is a classic video game Icon of the 1980s popular culture Environment is a maze with dots & fruits Pac-Man is an agent that eats the dots & fruits Ghosts are agents that attack the Pac-Man 2

Design & implement algorithms to –control the Pac-Man & –control the Ghosts Algorithm –Input the maze, location of dots & fruits location of the agents (Pac-Man & Ghosts) –Output Next move of the agents (left, right, up or down) Objectives –PacMan: avoid the ghosts & eat the dots + fruits –Ghosts: attack the PacMan 3 Project Overview

Algorithms & Heuristics Implementing a rational agent requires An algorithm to enumerate future states Heuristics to evaluate future states -To prune the search space -To choose among alternatives 4

Resources Programming environment provided by Derrick Stolee. It includes Java classes for the GUI and the basic classes for the agents Animated front-end simulating the original game-display provided by Derrick Stolee and the animation enhanced by Shant Karakashian Algorithms for the Pac-Man and the Ghosts from last year's competition Discuss with Shant and/or Derrick Resources available from: 5

Why do the Project Get a better understanding of AI Grasp the effectiveness of the search algorithms and the different heuristics Have a notion of the complexity that arises even from simple problems Compete against your colleagues through your intelligent agents in a public event Check the photo’s of last year’s partythe photo’s of last year’s party 6