Implementation of heuristic algorithms for board games

Implementation of Heuristic Algorithms for Board Games

Practical Software Course, Summer Semester 2013

News

03.07.2013 Added last assignments.

02.06.2013 Added new assignment.

26.04.2013 Added new assignment.

23.04.2013 Group meeting timetable added.

22.04.2013 Updates.

12.01.2013 Created this page.

Meeting Schedules

Lab meetings:

Date	Time	Location	Exercise
26.04.2012	15:45 - 16:30	5056
10.05.2012	15:45 - 16:30	5056
31.05.2012	15:45 - 16:30	5056
14.06.2012	15:45 - 16:30	5056
28.06.2012	15:45 - 16:30	5056
??.07.2012	??	??	Tournament

Date

Time

Location

Exercise

12.04.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

26.04.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

10.05.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

31.05.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

14.06.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

28.06.2012

15:45 - 16:30

5056

??.07.2012

Tournament

Group meetings:

Group	Location	Time
1	4201b	14:40 - 14:55
2	4201b	10:40 - 10:55
3	4201b	14:20 - 14:35
4	4201b	11:00 - 11:15
5	4201b	15:00 - 15:15
6	4201b	13:40 - 13:55
7	4201b	13:20 - 13:35
8	4201b	14:00 - 14:15
9	4201b	13:00 - 13:15
10	4201b	11:40 - 11:55

Group

Location

Time

4201b

14:40 - 14:55

4201b

10:40 - 10:55

4201b

14:20 - 14:35

4201b

11:00 - 11:15

4201b

15:00 - 15:15

4201b

13:40 - 13:55

4201b

13:20 - 13:35

4201b

14:00 - 14:15

4201b

13:00 - 13:15

4201b

11:40 - 11:55

Discussion Group

Use the mailinglist swp-i2-2013-pm AT lab9.sselab.de for general and technical questions and discussions among students. Students are urged to answer other student's questions.

Topics and Goals

The aim of the course is the implementation of a strong computer player for an extended version of Reversi. At the end of the course, a competition will be held between the developed computer players and a ranking is set up. The top of the ranking is the winner of the competition, and additional points to the final grade will be awarded to the winner.

During the course, techniques and concepts for creating stronger computer players are introduced incrementally which are expected to be studied and understood by the student. The course covers the following topics:

Client network socket programming
Mini-max and paranoid search
Alpha-beta pruning
Iterative deepening
Move sorting
Aspiration windows
Game state rating heuristics
Empirical algorithmic efficiency analysis
Performance and memory profiling
Technical writing and reporting

Lab organisers are Friedrich Gretz, Christian Dehnert and Harold Bruintjes.

References

Technical Writing Style by Wikiversity:
en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Technical_writing_style

Mayfield Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing:
www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/toc.htm

Checkstyle for Java:
checkstyle.sourceforge.net

Alpha-Beta Pruning Animations:
www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~yosenl/extras/alphabeta/alphabeta.html
homepage.ufp.pt/~jtorres/ensino/ia/alfabeta.html

Git Manual:
schacon.github.com/git/user-manual.html

Remarks

The preferred language for this course is English.

By default, the implementation is expected to be in Java.

Reports have to handled in a clearly defined location in your Git repository.

Attendance of every meeting is mandatory.

Students are expected to form and work in groups of 3 students.

Grades are based on the quality of the written reports, the quality of the source code, the strength of the AI, team play and work attitude.

BSc/MSc/Diploma Topics

Teaching WS 2012/13

Hybrid Systems Group

March 12, 2014

We are looking for a HiWi for the Compiler Construction course. If you are interested, please contact Thomas Noll.

Sept. 17, 2013

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been appointed as a member of the renowned Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe), a European, non-governmental association acting as an Academy whose members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education and research.

July 15, 2013

Vacancies for postdoctoral researchers in "Automated Analysis of Probabilistic Programs". Application deadline: August 15, 2013.

May 6, 2013

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship from the RWTH Aachen University.

April 11, 2013

The Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC'13) conference in Philadelphia has been very successful: Hongfei Fu received the best student paper award for his paper "Approximating acceptance probabilities of CTMC-paths on multi-clock deterministic timed automata". Besides, the paper by Ilya Tkachev, Alexandru Mereacre, Alessandro Abate and Joost-Pieter Katoen was ranked second in the overall best paper award selection.

March 20, 2013

Joost-Pieter Katoen has been elected as Steering Committee Chair of ETAPS (www.etaps.org), the largest conference on theory and practice of software in Europe. He is the first non-UK ETAPS SC chair since the conference was initiated in 1998. More information here.

February 6, 2013

The Alumni-Magazine of RWTH Aachen University contains an interview with our former PhD student and postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Tingting Han.

21 December, 2012

HiWi's wanted to work in a new European Space Agency project for enhancing state-of-the-art design and analysis tools (COMPASS) for the next generation European rockets. Need programming and model checking affinity. See here for details and contact.

August 16, 2012

We offer openings for several PhD candidates in the area of
"Model-Based Design and Analysis for Dependable Software Systems". Deadline for application: September 14, 2012. For further information click here.

July 20, 2012

The Theory of Hybrid Systems Group offers two jobs as student assistants within the CEBug project. For more information, look here.

April 2, 2012

Dino Distefano received the prestigious Roger Needham Award for his work on software verification. This award is for a distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher who has completed up to 10 years of post-doctoral research. Dr. Distefano was the first PhD student supervised by Joost-Pieter Katoen.

March 19, 2012

Marijn Jongerden received the German MMB (Messung, Modellierung und Bewertung von Rechensystemen) Award 2012 of the GI/ITG-Committee for Measurement, Modelling and Evaluation of Computing Systems for his PhD-thesis on "Model-based energy analysis of battery powered systems". His work was supervised by Boudewijn Haverkort (Twente) and Joost-Pieter Katoen.

March 1, 2012

Our paper "Formal Correctness, Safety, Dependability and Performance Analysis of a Satellite" has been accepted to ICSE 2012 in the track SE in Practice (18% acceptance rate). The paper treats a new satellite from the European Space Agency that was modeled and analyzed with modern tools during the actual satellite design.

January 27, 2012

Joost-Pieter Katoen will act as DJ in the "Nacht der Professoren" in the Apollo bar and cinema.

Older news