The Columbia X Master Course is a 4 month course that has sub-topics: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and CGI Motion & Animation. Out of these 4 courses I took two of them: Robotics & Artificial Intelligence. Yes, I took another college course as a high school student. These were some of the hardest courses I have ever experienced. It is tailored towards college students who actually want their Masters, not an high school student doing it for fun to also learn more about their passion.
ROBOTICS
For Robotics we used something called ROS (robot operating system) http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials
I honestly suggest you use that link up above to help you before you start that course. The first thing was writing a node that subscribes to a topic and publishes into another one. It is safe to say that was the easiest task they asked you to do, because after that it was scary. I ended up staying up all night completing these tasks, because I could not think of anything else, especially when my code refused to run. I was always so pissed at my computer, and when I tell you I was relieved when my code finally worked, I would be jumping on the bed for hours because I was so happy, not because I was a high schooler doing this but because I actually did it. The proctored final exams was like the tasks they had you do for the weeks
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
These are my solutions for the project 1. The project consisted on implementing a solver of 8-puzzle instances (actually N-puzzle). It contains 3 source codes:
driver.py: The main file of this project. It receives 2 arguments, the search strategy and the puzzle as a comma separated string.
utils.py: Contain implementation of basic data structure for implementing the search strategies.
search.py: It is sort of a framework, in which given a problem (defined as a class), can apply search strategies to that problem for finding a solution.
visualizer.py: Solves a random instance of 8-puzzle given a strategy, and then, shows in a GUI the path to the solution (It uses Tkinter).
That is project one in artificial intelligence and with project one I received 100% after pulling an all nighter, watching the videos over and over again.
If you attempt to do this, you must have an open mind and be prepared to fail sometimes and not get the grade you want.
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