I went to graduate school at the University of Memphis and ultimately received a Master's Degree in Computer Science, and in that program I was required to do a thesis. The Computer Science Department at that university mostly majored in Artificial Intelligence which I thought was great. AI (if all of its many aspects can be lumped into a single category) is definitely my favorite subject as far as computers are concerned.
My graduate advisor, Dr. Stan Franklin, taught a class called "Artificial Minds" which was a survey of the AI research in creating autonomous agents. He suggested that I carry on a project that was started by one of his former undergraduate students that combines two of the promising areas of research: Pandemonium and Animat. (This is why the project is called "Pandamat". Dr. Franklin came up with the name.) It seemed like an interesting idea, and so that is what I did.
I wrote a program that simulated a simple little creature (which is a typical research methodology in AI). I wrote the paper on it, and presented it successfully to the review committee. Dr. Franklin suggested that I submit the thesis to a journal, but, unfortunately I never did that. I always wished that my thesis could at least appear on the Internet, and so now that I have my own home page here it is!
I would like to make a special note of thanks to Dr. Franklin for his suggestion, his help in the research, and his support throughout the project.
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Copyright © 1998 Jeff Whitledge