"We wanted something that was physical, that would have to interact with the environment," explained Simmons, a research professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department (CSD) who directs SCS's undergraduate AI degree program. And they wanted these agents to run for two weeks at a time. "Most of the alternatives were robots and the likelihood that a robot would work for two weeks was very low."
Plants grow — and die — slowly, so they don't provide the immediate, dramatic feedback of, say, a robot running into a wall. But students said they nevertheless learned a lot about the pitfalls of autonomous agents during the two growing periods during the semester.
"Deployment isn't as easy as you think," said Vicky Zeng, a senior artificial intelligence major from Singapore. The autonomous agents receive input from temperature, humidity, soil moisture and light sensors, which they interpret to make adjustments on light, watering and fan operation. Faulty soil moisture sensors, however, plagued all of the teams, resulting in plants going without needed water. "Even if your agent is running fine, it can end up making poor decisions if it's getting bad sensor data," she said.
"Some of what they're learning is that relying only on your sensor values can be problematic," said Rosenthal, an assistant teaching professor in CSD. During the second growing period, she noted, moisture sensors showed there was plenty of water in the soil despite most teams never having watered, "but after a week we know the plants probably need water." In that case, the students were allowed to make a one-time adjustment to prevent all their plants from dying.
Autonomous agents thus must be designed to cope with errors, Zeng said. More than that, "we can't be waiting to see errors; we have to have methods for predicting errors. Sometimes things are out of your control but you try to prevent them from getting into that state." One solution: setting a maximum number of days that the plants can go without watering.
Arthur Dzieniszewski, a senior computer science major from New Jersey, comes from a family of gardeners and was immediately intrigued by the "Autonomous Agents" course when he heard about it. Many courses in computer science are heavy on theory, so having a course grounded by growing plants makes it more interesting and relatable, he said.
December 18, 2020 at 05:38AM
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The Salad Days of AI - Carnegie Mellon University
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