$30
Assignment 1 Solution
You may complete this assignment individually or with a partner, who can be from any section of the course.
Introduction
In every field there are unsolved problems: P vs. NP (you’ll learn about this as you progress in CS), the Oberwolfach problem (in math), whether the universal grammar exists (in linguistics). But in the field of teaching university courses, the true unsolvable problem is:
What is the best way to put students into groups?
Luckily, with your extensive programming knowledge that you have acquired from taking CSC148, you will be able to solve this problem once and for all.
Your task is to complete a program that analyzes data extracted from survey questions and uses this data to make optimal groups of students. This task has been broken down into several steps that are outlined in detail below.
Learning Goals
By the end of this assignment you should be able to:
read code you didn’t write and understand its design and implementation, including:
reading the class and method docstrings carefully (including attributes, representation invariants, preconditions, etc.)
determining relationships between classes, by applying your knowledge of composition and inheritance
complete a partial implementation of a class, including:
reading the representation invariants to enforce important facts about implementation decisions
reading the preconditions to factor in assumptions that they permit
writing the required methods according to their docstrings
using inheritance: defining a subclass of another class
perform unit testing on a program with many interacting classes
General Guidelines
You may complete this assignment individually or with a partner.
Please read this handout carefully and ask questions if there are any steps you do not understand.
The tasks are not designed to be equally difficult, or even in increasing order of difficulty. They are just laid out in logical order.
Although implementing a complex application can be challenging at first, we will guide you through a progression of tasks, in order to gradually build pieces of your implementation. However, it is your responsibility to read through this handout and the starter code we provide, carefully, and to understand how the classes work together in the context of the application.
Coding Guidelines
These guidelines are designed to help you write well-designed code that will adhere to the interfaces we have defined (and thus will be able to pass our test cases).
You must:
write each method in such a way that the docstrings you have been given in the starter code accurately describe the body of the method.
write at least one unit test for every method and function in the code you submit (this includes any helper methods that you may write).
You do NOT need to write doctests for the functions and methods in this assignment. The setup required to do the testing would create disruptively long docstrings.
incorporate inheritance into your code, as described in the Your Task section.
avoid writing duplicate code.
You must NOT:
change the parameters, parameter type annotations, or return types in any of the methods you have been given in the starter code.
add or remove any parameters in any of the methods you have been given in the starter code.
change the type annotations of any public or private attributes you have been given in the starter code.
create any new public attributes.
create any new public methods that do not override or extend a method of the same name in a parent class.
create any new top-level functions, that is, functions defined outside of any class.
write code that mutates objects unnecessarily.
add any more import statements to your code.
You may need to:
create new private methods for the classes you have been given.
if you create new private methods you must provide type annotations for every parameter and return value. You must also write a full docstring for this method as described in the function design recipe*
create new private attributes for the classes you have been given.
if you create new private attributes you must give them a type annotation and include a description of them in the class’s docstring as described in the class design recipe*
change the inheritance structure of classes you have been given in the starter code.
import more objects from the typing module
While writing your code you can assume that all arguments passed to the methods you have been given in the starter code will respect the preconditions outlined in the methods’ docstrings.
Your Task
Complete the classes and methods given to you in the starter code to create a piece of software that keeps track of survey data and uses the results of that data to make optimal groups of students according to provided criteria.
You are encouraged to complete this assignment in the order outlined in the steps below but you may choose a different order if you wish.
Make sure you complete each “Test your code!” section before moving on to the next step to make sure that your code works as expected.
In each of the steps below you are encouraged to read questions in the “Something to think about” sections. You are not required to answer these questions for this assignment but thinking about them might help you write better code!
Step 1: Get the starter code and read the documentation
Download the zip file that contains the starter code here a1.zip
Unzip the file and place the contents in pycharm in your a1 folder (remember to set your a1 folder as a sources root)
You should see the following files:
course.py
criterion.py
grouper.py
survey.py
tests.py
example_tests.py
example_usage.py
example_course.json
example_survey.json
For this assignment, you will be required to edit and submit the following files only:
course.py
criterion.py
grouper.py
survey.py
tests.py
If you look at these files you will notice that you have been given the signature and docstrings for all classes and methods. Read through these docstrings carefully; they describe how you are expected to implement these classes and methods.
A picture!
It might be difficult to imagine how all the classes defined in these files will interact before you start writing the code itself. To help you out, here is a diagram of all the classes you will be asked to contribute to for this assignment:
class_diagram.png
Note that the attributes and methods shown in this diagram are only the ones that we have given you in the starter code. You may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods.
Legend:
dashed lines indicate a composition relationship between classes
solid lines indicate an inheritance relationship between classes
a solid circle around a group of classes indicates that there exists an inheritance relationship between these classes but it is not defined (you get to decide!)
Test your code!
Try running the example_tests.py file: all of the tests should fail because you haven’t written any code yet!
Try running example_usage.py file: you should get an error since you haven’t written any code yet!
Open up the tests.py file: it is empty! This is where you will be writing all of your tests for this assignment
Something to think about!
Unlike A0, you will be submitting code split across multiple files. Open up each of the files and look at which functions and classes are defined in each file. Why do you think the files were organized in this way? Is there a different way we could have organized these files?
Step 2: Complete the Student class
The Student class represents a student who can be enrolled in a university course.
The starter code for the Student class can be found in course.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Student class’s methods. Then, implement each of the methods in the Student class.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Student. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestStudent class should now pass.
Something to think about!
The Student.has_answer method asks you to check if a student has a valid answer to a given question. Do we have a way to determine if an answer is valid or not yet? Answer: no and we won’t until we complete step 4. You may need to come back and finish this method after completing step 5.
Step 3: Complete the Course class
The Course class represents a university course.
The starter code for the Course class can be found in course.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Course class’s methods. Then, implement each of the methods in the Course class. You may find the function sort_students helpful.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Course. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestCourse class should now pass.
Something to think about!
The Course.all_answered method asks you to check if all students have a valid answer for every question in a Survey. Which steps do you need to complete before you can finish this method? You may have to come back later to finish the Course.all_answered method.
Step 4: Complete the Question classes
The file survey.py contains an abstract Question class, and the following classes for representing different types of questions that you might find on a survey:
Question
MultipleChoiceQuestion
NumericQuestion
YesNoQuestion
CheckboxQuestion
As well as defining the text of the question itself, these classes also specify what are valid answers to these questions.
Open up survey.py and read through the docstrings for the methods in these question classes.
You might notice that we have not defined any inheritance hierarchy between these classes. You get to decide what it should be. However, in doing so you must follow these rules:
The abstract Question class should not inherit from any class other than object.
All other Question classes should inherit from the abstract Question class either directly or indirectly.
At least one non-abstract Question class should inherit from another non-abstract Question class.
There are many possible inheritance structures you could choose. Remember that one of the requirements for this assignment is to avoid writing duplicate code. Think about which sort of inheritance structure best lets you avoid duplicate code.
Implement each of the methods in the Question classes. You may remove a method that we included in the starter code for a child class if you wish to simply inherit the parent’s method rather than to override it.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in each of the Question classes. You do not need to write tests for abstract methods or initializers but you do need to write tests for inherited methods.
For example, even if you structure your code so that a child class inherits its validate_answer method without modification from the parent class, you still need to write separate tests for the validate_answer method in the parent class and the child class.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestMultipleChoiceQuestion, TestNumericQuestion, TestYesNoQuestion, and TestCheckboxQuestion class should now pass.
Something to think about!
The validate_answer methods ask you to check if an answer is a valid answer for this question. Do we have a enough information about the Answer class in order to complete this method now? You may need to come back and finish this method after completing step 4.
Step 5: Complete the Answer class
The Answer class represents an answer to one of the questions you wrote classes for in Step 3.
The starter code for the Answer class can be found in survey.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Answer class’s methods. Then, implement each of the methods in the Answer class.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
If you have not implemented the validate_answer methods in the Question classes, the Course.all_answered and the Student.has_answer methods yet, go back and finish them now.
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Answer. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestAnswer class should now pass.
Something to think about!
The Answer class is one of the simplest classes that we will implement in this assignment. What is the advantage of creating such a simple class? Are there any disadvantages?
Step 6: Complete the Criterion classes
A criterion is a way of judging the quality of a group based on the group members’ answers to a particular question. For example, one criterion could be to want groups with homogeneous answers to a question asking what year they are in.
The starter code defines several Criterion classes in criterion.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Criterion class’ methods. The Criterion classes are the classes in this file that have “Criterion” in their name:
Criterion
HomogeneousCriterion
HeterogeneousCriterion
LonelyMemberCriterion
You might notice that we have not defined any inheritance hierarchy between these classes. You get to decide what it should be. However, in doing so you must follow these rules:
The abstract Criterion class should not inherit from any class other than object.
All other Criterion classes should inherit from the abstract Criterion class, either directly or indirectly.
At least one non-abstract Criterion class should inherit from another non-abstract Criterion class.
There are many possible inheritance structures you could choose. Remember that one of the requirements for this assignment is to avoid writing duplicate code. Think about which sort of inheritance structure best lets you avoid duplicate code.
Implement each of the methods in the Criterion classes. You should NOT implement an initializer for these classes.
Remember: You may remove a method defined in a child class if you wish to simply inherit the parent’s method directly.
Remember: you may need to define additional private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in each of the Criterion classes. You do not need to write tests for abstract methods but you do need to write tests for inherited methods.
For example, even if you structure your code so that a child class inherits its score_answers method without modification from the parent class, you still need to write separate tests for the score_answers method in the parent class and the child class.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestHomogeneousCriterion, TestHeterogeneousCriterion, and TestLonelyMemberCriterion classes should now pass.
Something to think about!
You are asked not to implement an initializer for the Criterion classes. Why is an initializer not necessary for these classes? If the Criterion classes do not define an initializer, will it be impossible to create instances of these classes?
Step 7: Complete the Group class
The Group class represents a collection of one or more students.
The starter code for the Group class can be found in grouper.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Group class’s methods. Then implement each of the methods in the Group class.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Group. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestGroup class should now pass.
Something to think about!
You may find the Python set type to be useful.
The Group.get_members method asks you to return a shallow copy of the _members private attribute instead of simply returning the list that _members refers to. A shallow copy of an object is a new object (with a different id) but whose contents are the same. For example,
dicts = [{1:2, 3:9}, {5:18}, {"adieu":7}]
copy = []
for item in dicts:
... copy.append(item)
...
# dicts and copy are two different objects.
id(dicts)
4485971264
id(copy)
4485971200
# But each item in copy is an alias for an item in dicts.
For example:
id(dicts[2])
4486046896
id(copy[2])
4486046896
# With a Python list, any time we slice we get a new list.
# This provides an easy way to make a shallow copy.
another_copy = dicts[:]
id(another_copy)
4485971008
id(another_copy[2])
4486046896
In contrast, a deep copy has new objects at every level, so it contains no aliases.
By returning a shallow copy, the Group.get_members method allows the client code to mutate the individual Student objects but not the Group object itself. The same reasoning holds for the Grouping.get_groups method in the next step.
Step 8: Complete the Grouping class
The Grouping class represents a collection of Group instances. An instance of a Grouping class can be used to represent every student in a course, divided up into groups.
The starter code for the Grouping class can be found in grouper.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Grouping class’s methods. Then, implement each of the methods in the Grouping class.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Grouping. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestGrouping class should now pass.
Something to think about!
An instance of the Grouping class starts out containing zero groups and more can be added later using the Grouping.add_group. On the other hand, an instance of the Group class starts out with some members and more cannot be added later. Why might we have chosen to implement these classes differently? What does this design choice tell us about how these classes are intended to be used?
Step 9: Complete the Survey class
The Survey class represents a collection of questions. It also associates each question with a criterion (indicating how to judge the quality of a group based on their answers to the question) and a weight (indicating the importance of this question in deciding how to group students).
The starter code for the Survey class can be found in survey.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the GroupSurveying class’s methods. Then, implement each of the methods in the Survey class.
Hint: Read the documentation for Survey._get_criterion and Survey._get_weight carefully before you implement the initializer.
Note: The weights associated with the questions in in a survey do NOT have to sum up to any particular amount.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in Survey. You are not required to write tests for initializers.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py, the tests in the TestSurvey class should now pass.
Something to think about!
What is the relationship between the Survey.score_students method and the Survey.score_grouping method?
Step 10: Complete the helper functions in grouper.py
The file grouper.py contains helper functions that implement two different ways of dividing a list up into parts.
Open this file and read through the documentation for these functions. Then, implement the functions.
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each function you implemented in this step.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py. The test_slice_list and test_windows tests should now pass.
Something to think about!
Why are we writing these functions outside of a class? Why not make them instance methods of one of the Grouper classes instead?
Step 11: Complete the Grouper classes
The Grouper classes represent different techniques for deciding how to split all the students in a course into a groups. See the docstrings of each of these classes and their methods for implementation details. The file Grouper Explanation.pdfPreview the document walks through a detailed example for each of the groupers. Make sure you understand the algorithms before you start writing code.
The starter code for the Grouper classes can be found in grouper.py. Open up this file and read through the docstrings for each of the the Grouper class’ methods.
The Grouper classes are the classes in this file that have “Grouper” in their name:
Grouper
AlphaGrouper
RandomGrouper
GreedyGrouper
WindowGrouper
Unlike the Criterion classes and Question classes, the inheritance structure between the Grouper classes has been given to you. You should NOT change the inheritance structure between the Grouper classes.
Implement each of the methods in the Grouper classes. You may find the function sort_students (defined in the course module) helpful.
Remember: you may need to define additional private attributes or private helper methods!
Test your code!
Write at least one unit test for each method in each of the Grouper classes. You do not need to write tests for abstract methods but you do need to write tests for inherited methods.
For example, even if you structure your code so that a child class inherits a private helper method without modification from the parent class, you still need to write separate tests for the private helper method in the parent class and the child class.
You should write these tests in the tests.py file.
Once you have finished writing these tests, run all the tests in test.py. Make sure your code passes all your tests before moving on.
Run the tests in example_tests.py. The tests in the TestAlphaGrouper, TestRandomGrouper, TestGreedyGrouper, and TestWindowGrouper classes should now pass.
A note on writing tests for methods that include randomness
When you test methods that include some randomness, you cannot simply test the return value since it will change from one call to the next. This is where property testing comes in (see the first lecture!).
For example, the tests in TestRandomGrouper test the following properties of the Grouping instance returned by the RandomGrouper.make_grouping method:
the number of groups in the grouping
the number of members in each group
the uniqueness of all members in the grouping
Think about what other properties you could test for when you write your own tests for this class.
Something to think about!
Now that you have written all the code, go back and look at the diagram in Step 1. This is just one possible way to have designed this code. Think about:
How could we have structured the classes differently?
What other classes might we want to add to this code in the future?
Imagine we wanted to add a class that keeps track of all of the courses in a university? How easy would it be to add this new class? Which existing classes (if any) would have to change?
Step 12: Test your code again!
Now that you have finished writing all the code, go back and run the example_usage.py file again. This file should now run without errors.
The example_usage.py file will create a course (from the data in example_course.json) and a survey (from the data in example_course.json) and will use that survey to group the students into groups of 2 using the AlphaGrouper class. Then it prints the members of each group and an overall score for the grouping.
You may change the group size and the grouper type by modifying the two lines at the bottom of the example_usage.py file under this comment:
# change the two variables below to test your code with different group
# sizes and grouper types.
Why you should write your own tests
The example_tests.py file might catch some bugs in your code but it will certainly not catch them all. In order to make sure your code is bug free you must write your own unit tests for each method.
Writing tests is also a great way to think about the code in a different way. If you find that you are getting stuck, try writing a test for the method you are stuck on; it just might help!
Also you will be graded on the tests you write so if nothing else you should do it for the marks.
Step 13: Submit your work
You’ve almost finished and now it is time to hand in your work!
BUT BEFORE YOU SUBMIT:
Take some time to polish up your code This not only will improve your mark, but it also feels good to make your code look its best! Here are some things you can do:
Pay attention to any violations of the Python style guidelines that PyCharm points out. Fix them!
In each module, run the provided python_ta.check_all(...) code to check for errors. Fix them!
Make sure the tests.py file contains at least one unit test for every method and function that you have implemented in course.py, criterion.py, grouper.py, and survey.py.
Check any docstrings that you have written to make sure they are precise and complete and that they follow the conventions of the Function Design Recipe* and the Class Design Recipe*.
Remove any code you added just for debugging, such as print function calls.
Remove any pass statements where you have added the necessary code.
Remove any TODO comments where you have added the necessary code.
Take pride in your gorgeous code! This assignment is a significant piece of software, and you should be proud of the work you’ve done!
Submission Guidelines:
Login to MarkUs and create a group for the assignment, or specify that you’re working alone.
DOUBLE CHECK ONE LAST TIME THAT YOUR CODE RUNS!!
Submit the following files only:
course.py
criterion.py
grouper.py
survey.py
tests.py
On a Teaching Lab machine, download the file you submitted into a brand-new folder, together with rest of the files you were provided:
example_tests.py
example_usage.py
example_course.json
example_survey.json
Test your code thoroughly one last time! Does it pass all of the tests in example_tests.py? Does it pass all of your tests in tests.py? Are there any python-ta errors that you should fix? Your code will be tested on the Teaching Lab machines, so it must run in that environment.
If you make any changes to your code make sure to submit the updated files to MarkUs before the deadline!
Congratulations, you are finished with your first major assignment in CSC148! You should definitely go and celebrate!
Appendix 1: An explanation of some pieces of the starter code.
There are parts of the starter code that you have been given that have not been explained in class. It is not absolutely necessary to understand them to complete this assignment but a brief explanation of each will be provided below for those of you who are interested:
if TYPE_CHECKING::
Pycharm does a lot of magic in order to highlight problematic code and give us hints as to how to improve the code we are writing as we are writing it. In order to do this, Pycharm constantly analyzes your code by running it though a program called a type checker. The TYPE_CHECKING variable is True only when a type checker is analyzing our code and False when we run our code normally. This lets us define a block of code that we don’t want to run normally but is useful for the type checker.
Extra Reading:
- https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html#typing.TYPE_CHECKING
- https://stackabuse.com/python-circular-imports/
@pytest.fixture
This is a part of the pytest library that lets us mark that a function should be treated as a “fixture”. In testing, a fixture is an object that can be used in multiple tests. Before each test runs, a fixture object get created if needed by running the fixture function and getting its return value. That fixture object is then passed as a parameter to the test. A test can indicate which fixtures it needs by including a parameter that has the same name as the fixture function.
For example, the TestCourse.test_enroll_students test has a parameter named empty_course so before the test is run, the empty_course fixture function will run and pass its return value as an argument to the test.
You do NOT need to use fixtures when writing your tests in the tests.py file.
Extra Reading:
- https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/fixture.html
Tuple[Student, ...]
This is a type annotation meaning a tuple that contains any number of Students. The ellipses (three dots) means that the length of the tuple does not matter.
Extra Reading:
- https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html#typing.Tuple
Classes in pytest:
You might have noticed that the tests in example_tests.py are organized into classes. This is simply a way to keep your tests organized and make it clear which groups of tests logically go together. You are not required to write your tests in tests.py in this way but you may if you wish.
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
2
Figure 1: A state of the Lunar Lockout puzzle. The red piece is a ’rover’ (or ’xanadu’), and the other pieces are ’helper robots’. The goal is to guide the ’rover’ pieces into the escape hatch at the center of the board.
https://piazza.com/utoronto.ca/summer2019/csc384/home.
If you have a question of a personal nature, please email the A1 TA, Randy, at rhickey@cs.toronto.edu or a course instructor. Make sure to place [CSC384] and A1 in the subject line of your message.
1 Introduction
The goal of this assignment will be to implement a working solver for the puzzle game Lunar Lockout shown in Figure 1. Lunar Lockout is a puzzle game that is played on an NxN board. The game requires ’helper robots’ to guide ’rovers’ (also called ’xanadus’) into an escape hatch that is located at the center of the board. The rules hold that pieces (i.e. helper bots and rovers) must move one at a time in a straight line; they may not move diagonally. Pieces also cannot move through one another. Moreover, each piece may only move in the direction of a second piece, and it must move until it collides with the second piece and comes to a stop. Moves may sometimes take pieces directly across the escape hatch or result in a robot blocking the escape hatch (i.e. occupying the same square as the escape hatch). A rover cannot exit the escape hatch unless in lands directly atop it.
The game is over when all rovers have successfully made it through the escape hatch.
You can watch a video of Lunar Lockout game-play on YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BxPr55buhM. Our version of Lunar Lockout is slightly more complicated, however, as there may be more than one rover that needs to be guided to the escape hatch,
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
3
there can be an arbitrary number of helper robots, and the size of the board may be larger than 5x5.
2 Description of Lunar Lockout
Lunar Lockout has the following formal description. Read the description carefully.
The puzzle is played on a square board that is a grid board with N squares in the x-dimension and N squares in the y-dimension. The dimension N is always odd.
Each state in the game contains the x and y coordinates for each robot as well as the x and y coordi-nates for each rover (or xanadu).
From each state, each robot and each rover can move North, South, East, or West, but only if there is a second robot or rover that lies in that direction. When a robot or rover moves, it must move all the way to the second piece until the pieces collide. For example, if a robot located at position (4, 0) moves South toward a rover located at (4, 3), the robot will end at the location (4, 2). No two pieces (robots or rovers) can move simultaneously or diagonally and pieces cannot pass through walls or one another.
The escape hatch is always located in the center of the board (i.e. at the grid location ((N −1)/2, (N − 1)/2).
Once a rover arrives at the escape hatch, it exits the board through the escape hatch. It then disappears from subsequent play.
Each movement is of equal cost.
The goal is achieved when all rovers have exited the board via the escape hatch.
Ideally, we will want our rovers to exit the escape hatch before they deplete our internal oxygen supplies. This means that with each problem instance, you will be given a computation time constraint. You must attempt to provide some legal solution to the problem (i.e. a plan) within this time constraint. Better plans will be plans that are shorter, i.e. that require fewer operations to complete.
Your goal is to implement an anytime algorithm for this problem: one that generates better solutions (i.e.
shorter plans) the more computation time it is given.
3 Code You Have Been Provided
The file search.py, which is available from the website, provides a generic search engine framework and code to perform several different search routines. This code will serve as a base for your Lunar Lockout solver. A brief description of the functionality of search.py follows. The code itself is documented and worth reading.
An object of class StateSpace represents a node in the state space of a generic search problem. The base class defines a fixed interface that is used by the SearchEngine class to perform search in that state space.
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
4
For the Lunar Lockout problem, we will define a concrete sub-class that inherits from StateSpace. This concrete sub-class will inherit some of the “utility” methods that are implemented in the base class. Each StateSpace object s has the following key attributes:
– s.gval: the g value of that node, i.e., the cost of getting to that state.
– s. parent: the parent StateSpace object of s, i.e., the StateSpace object that has s as a suc-cessor. This will be None if s is the initial state.
– s.action: a string that contains that name of the action that was applied to s. parent to generate s. Will be “START” if s is the initial state.
An object of class SearchEngine se runs the search procedure. A SearchEngine object is initialized with a search strategy (‘depth first’, ‘breadth first’, ‘best first’, ‘a star’, or ‘custom’) and a cycle checking level (‘none’, ‘path’, or ‘full’).
Note that SearchEngine depends on two auxiliary classes:
– An object of class sNode sn which represents a node in the search space. Each object sn contains a StateSpace object and additional details: hval, i.e., the heuristic function value of that state and gval, i.e. the cost to arrive at that node from the initial state. An f val f n and weight are tied to search nodes during the execution of a search, where applicable.
– An object of class Open is used to represent the search frontier. The search frontier will be organized in the way that is appropriate for a given search strategy.
When a SearchEngine’s search strategy is set to ‘custom’, you will have to specify the way that f values of nodes are calculated; these values will structure the order of the nodes that are expanded during your search.
Once a SearchEngine object has been instantiated, you can set up a specific search with:
init search(initial state, goal f n, heur f n, f val f n)
and execute that search with:
search(timebound, costbound)
The arguments are as follows:
– initial state will be an object of type StateSpace; it is your start state.
– goal f n(s) is a function which returns True if a given state s is a goal state and False other-wise.
– heuristic f n(s) is a function that returns a heuristic value for state s. This function will only be used if your search engine has been instantiated to be a heuristic search (e.g. best first).
– f val f n(sNode, weight) defines f values for states. This function will only be used by your search engine if it has been instantiated to execute a ‘custom’ search. Note that this function takes in an sNode and that an sNode contains not only a state but additional measures of the state (e.g. a gval). The function also takes in a float weight. It will use the variables that are provided to arrive at an f value calculation for the state contained in the sNode.
– timebound is a bound on the amount of time your code will be allowed to execute the search. Once the run time exceeds the time bound, the search must stop; if no solution has been found, the search will return False.
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
5
– costbound is an optional parameter that is used to set boundaries on the cost of nodes that are explored. This costbound is defined as a list of three values. costbound[0] is used to prune states based on their g-values; any state with a g-value higher than costbound[0] will not be expanded. costbound[1] is used to prune states based on their h-values; any state with an h-value higher than costbound[1] will not be expanded. Finally, costbound[2] is used to prune states based on their f -values; any state with an f -value higher than costbound[2] will not be expanded.
For this assignment we have also provided lunarlockout.py, which specializes StateSpace for the Lunar Lockout problem. You will therefore not need to encode representations of Lunar Lockout states or the successor function for Lunar Lockout! These have been provided to you so that you can focus on implementing good search heuristics and an anytime algorithm.
The file lunarlockout.py contains:
An object of class LunarLockoutState, which is a StateSpace with these additional key attributes:
– s.width: the width (and height) of the Lunar Lockout board
– s.robots: positions for each robot that is on the board. Each robot position is a tuple (x, y), that denotes the robot’s x and y position. s.robots is therefore a tuple of tuples.
– s.xanadus: positions for each rover that is on the board. Each rover position is also an (x, y) tuple. Like s.robots, s.xanadus is a tuple of tuples.
LunarLockoutState also contains the following key functions:
– successors(): This function generates a list of LunarLockoutStates that are successors to a given LunarLockoutState. Each state will be annotated by the action that was used to arrive at the LunarLockoutState. These actions are (r, d) tuples wherein r denotes the index of the robot d denotes the direction of movement of the robot.
– hashable state(): This is a function that calculates a unique index to represents a particular LunarLockoutState. It is used to facilitate path and cycle checking.
– print state(): This function prints a LunarLockoutState to stdout.
Note that LunarLockoutState depends on one auxiliary class:
– An object of class Direction, which is used to define the directions that each robot can move and the effect of this movement.
Also note that lunarlockout.py contains a set of 20 initial states for Lunar Lockout problems, which are stored in the tuple PROBLEMS. You can use these states to test your implementations.
The file solution.py contains the methods that need to be implemented.
The file autograder.py runs some tests on your code to give you an indication of how well your methods perform.
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
6
4 Assignment Specifics
To complete this assignment you must modify solution.py to:
Implement an L distance heuristic (heur L distance(state)). This heuristic will be used to estimate how many moves a current state is from a goal state. To calculate the L distance of a xanadu, assume it can move any number of squares horizontally as a first move followed by any number of squares vertically as a second move. Your implementation should calculate the sum of the L distances between each xanadu and the escape hatch. Ignore the positions of any intervening pieces in your calculations (i.e., for the purposes of this calculation, the xanadu does not need a piece to slide into and does not stop sliding when it hits another piece).
Implement a non-trivial heuristic for Lunar Lockout that improves on the L distance heuristic (heur alternate Explain your heuristic in your comments in under 250 words.
Implement Anytime Weighted A* (weighted astar(initail state, timebound)). Details about this al-gorithm are provided in the next section.
Note that your implementation will require you to instantiate a SearchEngine object with a search strategy that is ‘custom’. You must therefore create an f-value function ( f val f n(sNode, weight)) and remember to provide this, and the weight that your function requires, when you execute search.
Briefly type an answer to the following questions and submit it in a text file named Astar.txt.
Suppose you want to use A* and you have a heuristic that may overestimate or underestimate cost to the goal by as much as 20%. Can you do anything to guarantee the algorithm will find the optimal solution (if one exists)?
(True or False) Assume you you are playing Lunar Lockout on a board that has three xanadus. The sum of the Manhattan distances between each xanadu and the exit is an admissible heuristic for this problem, should you use A-star to solve it.
Note that when we are testing your code, we will limit each run of your algorithm on teach.cs to 2 seconds. Instances that are not solved within this limit will provide an interesting evaluation metric: failure rate.
5 Anytime Weighted A*
Instead of A*’s regular node-valuation formula ( f = g(node) + h(node)), Weighted-A* introduces a weighted formula:
f = g(node) + w ⇤ h(node)
where g(node) is the cost of the path to node, h(node) the estimated cost of getting from node to the goal, and w ≥ 1 is a real number. Theoretically, the smaller w is, the better the solution will be (i.e. the closer to the optimal solution it will be ... why??). However, different values of w will require different computation times.
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
7
An anytime version of this algorithm begins with a fast-running weight for w, and iteratively reduces the weight each time a solution is found. When time is up, the best solution (so far) is returned.
When you are passing in an f val function to init search for this problem, you will need to have specified the weight for the f val f unction. You can do this by wrapping the f val f unction(sN, weight) you have written in an anonymous function, i.e.,
wrapped f val f unction = (lambda sN : f val f unction(sN, weight))
Assignment 1, University of Toronto, CSC384 - Intro to AI, Summer 2019
8
Figure 2: A state of the Water Jugs puzzle.
StateSpace Example: WaterJugs.py
WaterJugs.py contains an example implementation of the search engine for the Water Jugs problem shown in Figure 2.
You have two containers that can be used to store water. One has a three-gallon capacity, and the other has a four-gallon capacity. Each has an initial, known, amount of water in it.
You have the following actions available:
– You can fill either container from the tap until it is full.
– You can dump the water from either container.
– You can pour the water from one container into the other, until either the source container is empty or the destination container is full.
You are given a goal amount of water to have in each container. You are trying to achieve that goal in the minimum number of actions, assuming the actions have uniform cost.
WaterJugs.py has an implementation of the Water Jugs puzzle that is suitable for using with search.py. Note that in addition to implementing the three key methods of StateSpace, the author has created a set of tests that show how to operate the search engine. You should study these to see how the search engine works.
GOOD LUCK!
