Artificial Intelligence: Search and Its Applications

Over the past few decades, artificial intelligence-based technology has been rapidly evolving and influencing people’s social, professional and daily lives. Self-driving cars, robot-like and virtual assistants, homepage chatbots, news bots, smart medicine and education – it is only a few of what we already have and will have soon. Thus, intelligent systems are no longer a ghost or an unattainable dream. They are part of our everyday life.

Therefore the rapidly growing role of artificial intelligence in today’s and tomorrow’s society determines the need for academically educated people. Enterprises worldwide seek those who understand the principles and perspectives of artificial intelligence and can apply the methods and techniques available in this field to real-world problem-solving.

The field of artificial intelligence is impressively huge. It includes methods and technologies for imitating in computers every aspect of intelligent behaviour: natural language processing, perception, reasoning, problem-solving, making decisions, learning ability, knowledge representation and storage, motion and object manipulation, and others. Search is a fundamental part of artificial intelligence. It allows building intelligent computer systems that can explore alternative sequences of problem-solving steps until they reach the defined goal. Search algorithms underlay automated decision-making systems, game playing software, job planning systems, theorem provers, product recommendation systems, pattern recognition software, robotic solutions, and many other types of systems.

COURSE GOALS

This course is designed to introduce the classic basics of artificial intelligence to anyone interested in the topic. The learning materials explain complex concepts using the most straightforward words and easily understandable examples. In this course, you will learn:

• the definition, roots, goals, tasks, methods and approaches of artificial intelligence
• the formal representation of problems in the form of a state-space graph
• problem-solving using uninformed and heuristic search algorithms
• application of search-based techniques of artificial intelligence to the development of intelligent games

COURSE OUTCOME

This course explains the concept of artificial intelligence and delivers in-depth knowledge in uniformed and heuristically informed search algorithms. Furthermore, game development serves as an area of the practical application of search concepts taught in the course.

The course has been created within the framework of the European Social fund project No. 8.2.3.0/18/A/012 “Rīgas Tehniskās universitātes efektīvas pārvaldības attīstība”