The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras will offer a free online course on artificial intelligence (AI) starting from January 24 upto March 8, 2022.

This 8-week course will be offered on the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) platform. Although the course is open to all, knowing the basics of Computer Science is a prerequisite therefore, professionals and students with computer science background are preferred. 

The course will cover the following:

• Constraint satisfaction problems (CSP), examples.
• Constraint networks, equivalent and projection networks.
• Constraint propagation, arc consistency, path consistency, i-consistency.
• Directional consistency and graph ordering, backtrack free search, adaptive consistency.
• Search methods for solving CSPs, lookahead methods, dynamic variable and value ordering.
• Lookback methods, Gaschnig’s back jumping, graph based backjumping, conflict directed backjumping, and combing lookahead with look back, learning.
• Model based systems, model based diagnosis, truth maintenance systems, planning as CSP. 

While the course is free of cost, those who wish to obtain a certificate need to register and appear for a exam at the institute's designated examination center and score the minimum decided by IIT-Madras. Exam registration fees are Rs 1000.

The exams will be conducted on March 27, 2022 in two seasons - Morning session, from 9am to 12 noon and afternoon session, from 2pm to 5pm.

Students can find further details about the course on the NPTEL website.