Home page for the PhD course "Emerging IT technologies: Autonomous Systems and Blockchains" of the XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII Cycles of the Doctorate School in Industrial Innovation Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
The course is divided in two lectures:
- Autonomous systems: an overview
- On the notion of autonomy
- Agents
- Multiagent systems
- Game theory: individual stance
- Game theory: collective stance
- Multiagent interactions
- Conclusion
- Blockchain: an overview
- Why
- What
- How
- Deep dive: Ethereum
- Deep dive: smart contracts
- Conclusion
The course is 8 hours (2 ETCS) long and is scheduled for late October 2023:
- Monday 23/10/2023, 9am - 1pm
- Thursday 26/10/2023, 1pm - 5pm
Lectures will be at the Buccola-Bisi Pavillion in the San Lazzaro Campus of Reggio Emilia:
- Monday room F1.4
- Thursday room F1.3
Remote participation can be requested to the teacher and will be granted on a discretional basis as livestreaming interactive sessions on MS Teams:
- team name: phdXXXVI-asb
- team link: here
- team code: vhmk0v7 (in case of any problems with MS Teams contact me)
Link to the course slides, interactive version (navigation buttons at bottom-right): https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/
- direct link to the first part (autonomous systems): https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/index-autonomous.html
- direct link to the second part (blockchain): https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/index-blockchain.html
Link to the course slides, pdf version: https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/?print-pdf/
- direct link to the first part (autonomous systems): https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/index-autonomous.html?print-pdf/
- direct link to the second part (blockchain): https://smarianimore.github.io/phdcourse-2020/index-blockchain.html?print-pdf/
Links to code examples:
- JADE examples
- Jason example (kindly provided by Giovanni Ciatto)
- TuCSoN example (kindly provided by Giovanni Ciatto)
Students enrolled in the course can choose to take the final examination as a quiz. The quiz will feature 10 questions, 8 in multiple choice form, 2 in open answer form, to be answered in 30 minutes. The quiz yields "success/failure", no numeric score. To succeed, students need to correctly answer 4 multiple choices and 1 open answer.
The pool of eligible questions is as follows:
Multiple choice
- Which are the core features defining a software agent?
- What is theoretical reasoning?
- What is practical reasoning?
- Which are the abstractions of the BDI model?
- Which are the most common agent architectures?
- Which are the properties that adaptiveness brings to a system?
- What is a dominant strategy?
- What are zero-sum games?
- What is Nash equilibrium?
- Which are the forms of interaction in a multiagent system?
- Which are the types of interaction in a multiagent system?
- What is the core mechanism that makes tuple spaces suitable for coordinating interactions?
- Which are the existing technologies cleverly combined by the blockchain?
- What does it mean to mine blocks?
- Which properties should a digital signature guarantee?
- Which properties should consensus guarantee?
- According to FLP theorem, which are the two properties you have to choose amongst in case of failures?
- According to CAP theorem, which are the two properties you have to choose amongst in case of network partitions?
- What is eventual consistency?
- What is a Byzantine failure?
Open questions
- What is the intentional stance?
- What does Newell's principle of rationality say?
- What is adaptiveness?
- What is a multiagent system?
- What is game theory in a nutshell?
- What is an interaction protocol?
- What are the differences between ContractNet and auctions?
- What is the problem of distributed consensus?
- What is the typical lifecycle of a block (6 steps)