Bob Futrelle's Teaching

I've taught a wide variety of CS courses in my twenty years at Northeastern.

In the Fall of 2005, I taught undergraduate Computer Graphics, CSU540. The construction of 3D objects and lighting them was based on triangular patches. Using barycentric coordinates, as described in Peter Shirely's graphics text (A K Peters, 2005), it is possible to easily decide whether or not a ray intersects the interior of the patch.

Course website:
http://www.ccs.northeastern.edu/home/futrelle/teaching/csu540f2005/index.html

Below are two of the best project results from the class. All programming was done from scratch in Java, using no prebuilt libraries or systems such as OpenGL. The only drawing primitive used was the ability to display a single pixel of a chosen color/intensity. I furnished a portion of the linear algebra code and the triangle intersection code. That's all.

By Alison Campanella -

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By Jason Bernardo -

Here's the note I mailed to grads@ccs.neu.edu:

Subject:Information on Spring 2007 AI course, CSG120.
Starts Thursday, Jan. 11th

The graduate course in Artificial Intelligence (AI), CSG120, will be given by Professor Futrelle this Spring Semester, 2007. It will be held on Thursdays from 6pm to 9p in 110 Kariotis, starting on January 11th. A collection of basic information about the course, about a dozen web pages so far, is at:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/futrelle/teaching/csg120sp2007/index.html

The course will be based on the leading AI text by Russell and Norvig. Some notable aspects of the course include:

* The first two classes will give a complete overview of the entire course, chapter by chapter, topic by topic. This should help in a variety of ways, including helping you to zero in on an interesting topic for your course project.

* In addition to the textbook topics, the course will discuss AI in console games as well as human and animal intelligence from the point of view of cognitive science.

* There are a large number of books on reserve in Snell library for this course and the separate undergraduate AI course I'll be teaching, CSU520. Use of some of these books will be required as part of your project. There are even four books on AI in game programming in the collection. I have an XBOX 360, which I hope to be able to run and project on the screen in class.

* Various modes for announcements and communication are set up: A course mailing list with archives is available; in addition to my regular office hours, I will have two evening sessions of IM office hours; I have a teaching blog for general notes on this course and other teaching topics I find interesting,

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/futrelle/teaching/blogs/index1.html

* I don't do PowerPoint lectures. Personally, I think they're pretty deadly. Instead, I encourage students to read the assigned material carefully, so the classes can be devoted to matters of answering questions, emphasis, examples, clarification, and interesting additional material. I do occasionally put things on the screen when it would take too much time to write out equations or draw diagrams, and such.

* My own research involves AI and has for some 25 years, so I know a fair amount about the subject. I'm not a hard-core theoretician, rather, a scientist who is interested in AI issues in the broadest sense. So the course will not focus on theory and mathematics in the way some do.

* Course topics include agents, search, logic, knowledge representation, uncertainty in representation and reasoning, learning, natural language, perception, robotics, game AI, and some topics from cognitive science.

Please mail me with any questions or comments you might have about the course.

-- Professor Futrelle

As of 2:40 am, this December 24th, I've posted seven pages for my Spring 2007 AI courses, some in the CSG120 space and some in the CSU520/CSG120 shared space. They are a good start. Later today, I'll compose and send an email to grads@ccs.neu.edu to alert them to the course, emphasizing the course structure (overview, readings, project) as well as interesting content such as cognitive science and game AI. The CSG120 homepage is linked on my teaching gateway page too.

The CSG120 homepage is at:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/futrelle/teaching/csg120sp2007/index.html

I'm busy with a number of things at the moment for the two Artificial Intelligence courses I will be teaching starting January 8th:

• Creating the initial pages for the grad course, CSG120, so I can then send email to grads alerting them to the course and its content. The site, with these initial pages, should be up within a few days. (Before Saturday aft. for sure, when our daughter Genevieve, boyfriend Francesco, and dog Samson will arrive from Brooklyn, by way of Maine).
• Simultaneously creating the undergrad (UG) pages, since the two offerings will be very much in synch. The enrollment for the UG course is already ample, so I'm not as concerned about that.
• Learning about computer and console games, since a major application of AI is in games. All the non-player characters (NPCs) need to act 'intelligently' if a game is to be interesting. This includes collaborators, enemies, and general NPCs.
• As part of this I just bought an XBOX 360. I'm trying to decide on a few games to get for it that are known for decent AI content.