1. Move Generators and Other Basic Functions for the WRKBK Problem
Updated on Sept. 17, 2016!
Move Generators and Other Basic Functions for the WRKBK Problem
Develop a function WMOVE: State2Move ; e.g WMOVE(s34) returns the moves white can make in state s23, e.g. ((K, 3, 4), (R, 8, 5)). Remark: Do not creates moves that lead to the death of the white king or the loss of the white rook!
Develop a function BMOVE: StateState{c, s, m} that takes the input state and returns the state obtained by moving the black king; the function additionally returns the status of the game: c indicates that the game continues, s indicates that we have a stale mate, m indicates that we have a mate; in the case that the input state s is a mate or stalemate position, BMOVE(s) returns (s,’s’) or (s,’m’).
Using the first 2 functions, develop a function APPLYM: State  Move  State {c, s, m} that applies the (white) input move to the input state obtaining a new state s’ and moves the black king in state s’, and returns the state obtained; that is it applies two moves and returns the obtained state and the status of the game: either ‘c’, ‘s’ or ‘m’.
Write a function that reads training and test files.
Write a main program that executes your software system by running your search function for the problems in the input files, and which writes solutions and meta data for each solution to an output file.
Write a function to visualize WRKBK states and solutions to the WRKBK problems
Write a function to visualize solutions to WRKBK problems
Represent states efficiently as you will create a lot of them e.g. just use 6 numbers that represent the positions of the 3 pieces or even only a single number e.g !

2. Updated on Sept. 19, 2016!
Other Advice
Get the software that reads the file and solves the problem in the file and produces an output file for all test cases running asap!!
Make the number of state explored SEXPL a constant, and set it to a small value; e.g. 50 first and not 10000; as you might recall in case that you generated exceeds SEXP, you program should terminate unsuccessfully. To ensure fairness, students who do not properly update the SEXP in their software system will be significantly punished.
Using other Software in the Project:
Use of chess playing programs is strictly prohibited, but use of general software for search or modification of pseudo code of such software is allowed.
However if you use search or other software in your software system, you have to mention/reference this software in your final report; failing to do so is an academic honesty violation. This should be done for every external software you use; e.g. if you use chess board display software is fine, but you have to acknowledge that you used this software and did not write it yourself.
Project1 is individual project; using code written by other students is strictly prohibited, and represents a serious academic honesty violation.

3. Thoughts on Search Strategies for the WRKBK Problem
The task is to solve the problem at hand
Hill-Climbing, Randomized Hill Climbing, Backtracking, Best-first Search,… all seem to be suitable search strategies for the problem
Find “good” evaluation functions” (e.g. f(pos)=king_close_w_king(pos)*a + king_close_to_rook(pos)*b + c*1/Freedom_black_king(pos)) for one of the available search strategies
Rapid prototyping is strongly recommended; also don’t make things too complicated at the beginning
Try to learn from sample runs
Idea: break the problem into sub-problems and solve each sub-problem separately.
Idea: Reduce the search space by disallowing certain moves
Idea: Use look-ahead when you use backtracking or hill climbing
You are allowed to take advantage of the face that “you know in advance how the black king moves”. It is okay if you implement a game-style system but you should be aware of the fact that you are trying to solve a more complicated problem which makes it much harder to get your system running.
“Complex” search strategies are frequently hard to debug/improve.

4. Thoughts on Search Strategies for the WRKBK Problem (cont)
Instead of looking to all possible positions sample some of those to reduce the complexity of the search
Checking for duplicate states might or might not help (this answer is dependent on the employed search strategy)
Disjunctive goals in search create problems
Taking advantage of symmetry is complicated, but might help!
There is a training benching that is already posted, consisting of 13 problems and a test benchmark consisting of 7 problems will be used to evaluate how your software systems deals with “novel” problems. Test cases will be sorted by difficulty; if you program cannot solve all the test problems this is not the end of the world; however, if it is not able to solve the “simple” cases you will not get a good grade for project.
The primary goal is to checkmate the black king; however, programs that find shorter solutions will get higher, but not necessarily a lot higher scores.
The project will be graded evaluating your report, the quality of the designed program, and the programs performance for the training and test set. Program performance for training and testing benchmark will count at least 55% towards the overall grade.

5. IJCAI 2016 Homepage http://ijcai-16.org/index.php/welcome/view/home
Important: Take a look at it prior to the September 22 lecture!
Word cloud of papers that have been accepted for IJCAI 2016
Remark: 3 Students will describe in 2 minutes the 1 or 2 things they found interesting at the website
or they will tell you why this website is completely boring.
Dr, Eick conducted a lottery and these three students are: Chan,Kong, Kaminski,Nicholas,Joseph and
Walvekar,Deeptiramachandra (can bring a single slide and we will upload it before the lecture on 9/22).

6. Automated Cooperative Driving
(Major Event in 2016)
(Sample Project)

7. Internet of Things (IoT)
Samsung IoT in the Future Video: IoT Conference Program:
Remark: 3 students already give a presentation on IoT on September 27, 2016!

8. Angry Bird Game AI Competitions
Main Website: Competition Organizers: Angry Bird Game Sample Game Video: (44 million views)

9. IJCAI 2016 Best Paper Award Presentation
October 13, 3:30p: Presentation and Review of the IJCAI 2016 Distinguished Award Paper "Hierarchical Finite State Controllers for Generalized Planning" by Javier Segovia, Sergio Jimenez and Anders Jonsson (Paper Download; 3 students, minutes, followed by a general discussion of the paper!)
Remarks:
The whole class will read this paper; its contents might be even relevant for the Midterm exam scheduled for October 25!
Understanding papers at top conferences in tough: if you understand 50% of the paper, I would be vey happy; however, three of you might understand about 70% of the paper.
Presentation Plan: Present the content of the paper (80%) and give a brief evaluation of the paper at the end of your presentation (20%)!
Because of what I said before, my expectations for the Oct. 13 presentation are quite low.