DCS440 -- Intro to AI

Project Overview

My project was to create an artificial pet. I named him Milo, which stood for memory and interaction learning organism. I originally planned to have Milo learn from his past interactions with the user, however this proved to be more difficult than I expected. As a result, I was only able to have Milo respond to predetermined commands. In the future, I plan to make Milo more interesting by allowing him to create his own responses to the given command. I also plan to have Milo develop an opinion of the user. This will then affect Milo's actions. For example, based on his previous experience Milo has decided that the user is mean. Milo will then react with indifference or maybe even hostility.

Project Domain

Milo is intended to amuse and entertain the user. It waits for the user's command and then decides if it should obey the command or not. This decision is based on how Milo is feeling. Milo's feelings are determined by his hunger and how comfortable he is.

Possible Uses for Milo

Milo will be perfect for people who want a pet, but don't want the hassles of cleaning and caring for them.

Milo can also be used to interview people. Instead of waiting for commands, Milo will ask technical as well as personal questions. He can then create a report stating the prospect's personal and technical compatibility with current employees.

Another possible use for Milo is research. By studying the process that Milo uses to determine his response, we can gain insight to interpersonal communication.

Techniques Used in the Project

Since Milo has two states that determine his feelings, I represented time in terms of these two states.