CS 422
Intelligent Avatars Lab
Spring 2010

Announcements
  1. (6/5) Final presentations will be held 3:30-6:30 in Gates 120 on Wednesday 6/9.  The final writeup and code submission is also due that day.
  2. (5/14) Reminder: Grace Ahn from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab will be the guest lecturer on Monday 5/17, please be on time.  Group meetings will continue on Wednesday 5/19 in Gates 140.
  3. (5/5) There will be no class on Monday 5/10.  Instead, 30-minute group meetings will be held on Wednesday 5/12 in Gates 128.
  4. (4/29) Major Announcements:
    1. The Phrase I Competition will be restarted on Saturday 5/1 11AM and run until Monday 5/3 9AM.
    2. Class is cancelled for Monday 5/3.
    3. Each team will be giving a 30 minute in-class presentation on their approach to the competition on Wednesday 5/5.
  5. (4/21) Raymond will be holding extra office hours on Friday 4/23 from 9:00-10:30AM.
  6. (4/19) Grace Ahn from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab will be giving a guest lecture on Monday 5/17.
  7. (4/17) On Monday 4/26 we will be holding a lab day instead of recitation.  Bring your laptops to class and get help from your fellow classmates.  The staff will also be available for help.
  8. (4/17) The Phase I Competition rules and metrics points have been posted.
  9. (4/12) The schedule on the syllabus has been updated.
  10. (4/9) The solution to the homework assignment has been posted.
  11. (4/1) The section on setting up the database connection has been updated on in the Software Infrastructure part 2 slides.
  12. (3/31) The homework assignment has been posted.  It is due on Wednesday 4/7/10.
Course Information
In this small lab course students will implement intelligent behaviors for autonomous avatars in virtual worlds (specifically, in Second Life). Working either individually or in pairs, students will be given a brief tutorial on the software environment, will design a behavior for the autonomous avatar(s), and once that is approved, will implement the behavior. The programs can control a single avatars, or orchestrate a behavior of multiple avatars.  This is an experimental class and enrollment will be limited this year. Special bonus: Bing Gordon, co-founder of Electronic Arts, will participate as both a lecturer and judge.

Prerequisites: The class is appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate students. The only prerequisite is programming experience. The specific software environment we will use will be covered in class.

Staff

The staff mailing list is: cs422-spr0910-staff@lists.stanford.edu

Instructor:
Yoav Shoham (shoham@)
Gates 140

TA:
Raymond Hsu (hsuray@cs)
Gates 128

Schedule

3 units. Mon/Wed 9:00 - 10:50am. Gates 120 (Fishbowl)

Group Meeting Schedule

On the following Wednesdays: 4/14, 4/21, 5/12, 5/19, 5/26, 6/2:

  1. 9:00 - Rich, Tyler
  2. 9:30 - Eric, Moontae
  3. 10:00 - Zach, Matt
  4. 10:30 - Nisha, Neel

Presentation Schedule

  1. Phase I presentations:
    1. Monday 5/3: Rich and Tyler, Eric and Moontae
    2. Wednesday 5/5: Zach and Matt, Nisha and Neel

Information and Handouts

  1. Software Resources
  2. Syllabus (pdf, html)
  3. Second Life Quickstart Guide
  4. Avatar Shadow
  5. Slides:
    1. Software Infrastructure part 1
    2. Software Infrastructure part 2
  6. Homework assignment (CS422API Visual Studio starter code, solution)
  7. Phase I Competition