Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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 Agents
• An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving
its environment through sensors and acting upon that
environment through actuators
• Human agent: eyes, ears, and other organs for
sensors; hands,
• legs, mouth, and other body parts for actuators
• Robotic agent: cameras and infrared range finders for
sensors;
• various motors for actuators
 Agents and environments

• The agent function maps from percept histories to

actions:
[f: P*  A]
• The agent program runs on the physical architecture
to produce f
• agent = architecture + program
 Vacuum-cleaner world

• Percepts: location and contents, e.g., [A,Dirty]

• Actions: Left, Right, Suck, NoOp
 A vacuum-cleaner agent
• \input{tables/vacuum-agent-function-table}
 Rational agents
• An agent should strive to "do the right thing", based
on what it can perceive and the actions it can perform.
The right action is the one that will cause the agent to
be most successful
• Performance measure: An objective criterion for
success of an agent's behavior
• E.g., performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner
agent could be amount of dirt cleaned up, amount of
time taken, amount of electricity consumed, amount of
noise generated, etc.
 Rational agents
• Rational Agent: For each possible percept
sequence, a rational agent should select an
action that is expected to maximize its
performance measure, given the evidence
provided by the percept sequence and
whatever built-in knowledge the agent has.
 Rational agents
• Rationality is distinct from omniscience (all-
knowing with infinite knowledge)
• Agents can perform actions in order to modify
future percepts so as to obtain useful
information (information gathering, exploration)
• An agent is autonomous if its behavior is
determined by its own experience (with ability
to learn and adapt)
 PEAS
• PEAS: Performance measure, Environment,
Actuators, Sensors
• Must first specify the setting for intelligent agent
design
• Consider, e.g., the task of designing an automated
taxi driver:
– Performance measure
– Environment
– Actuators
– Sensors
 PEAS
• Must first specify the setting for intelligent agent
design
• Consider, e.g., the task of designing an automated
taxi driver:
– Performance measure: Safe, fast, legal, comfortable trip,
maximize profits
– Environment: Roads, other traffic, pedestrians, customers
– Actuators: Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, signal, horn
– Sensors: Cameras, sonar, speedometer, GPS, odometer,
engine sensors, keyboard
 PEAS
• Agent: Medical diagnosis system
• Performance measure: Healthy patient,
minimize costs, lawsuits
• Environment: Patient, hospital, staff
• Actuators: Screen display (questions, tests,
diagnoses, treatments, referrals)
• Sensors: Keyboard (entry of symptoms,
findings, patient's answers)
 PEAS
• Agent: Part-picking robot
• Performance measure: Percentage of parts in
correct bins
• Environment: Conveyor belt with parts, bins
• Actuators: Jointed arm and hand
• Sensors: Camera, joint angle sensors
 PEAS
• Agent: Interactive English tutor
• Performance measure: Maximize student's
score on test
• Environment: Set of students
• Actuators: Screen display (exercises,
suggestions, corrections)
• Sensors: Keyboard
 Environment types
• Fully observable (vs. partially observable): An agent's sensors
give it access to the complete state of the environment at each
point in time.
• Deterministic (vs. stochastic): The next state of the
environment is completely determined by the current state and
the action executed by the agent. (If the environment is
deterministic except for the actions of other agents, then the
environment is strategic)
• Episodic (vs. sequential): The agent's experience is divided
into atomic "episodes" (each episode consists of the agent
perceiving and then performing a single action), and the choice
of action in each episode depends only on the episode itself.
 Environment types
• Static (vs. dynamic): The environment is unchanged
while an agent is deliberating. (The environment is
semidynamic if the environment itself does not
change with the passage of time but the agent's
performance score does)
• Discrete (vs. continuous): A limited number of distinct,
clearly defined percepts and actions.
• Single agent (vs. multiagent): An agent operating by
itself in an environment.
 Environment types
Chess with Chess without Taxi driving
a clock a clock
Fully observable Yes Yes No
Deterministic Strategic Strategic No
Episodic No No No
Static Semi Yes No
Discrete Yes Yes No
Single agent No No No

• The environment type largely determines the agent design

• The real world is (of course) partially observable, stochastic, sequential,
dynamic, continuous, multi-agent
 Agent functions and programs
• An agent is completely specified by the agent
function mapping percept sequences to actions
• One agent function (or a small equivalence
class) is rational
• Aim: find a way to implement the rational agent
function concisely
 Table-lookup agent
• \input{algorithms/table-agent-algorithm}
• Drawbacks:
– Huge table
– Take a long time to build the table
– No autonomy
– Even with learning, need a long time to learn the
table entries
 Agent program for a vacuum-
cleaner agent
• \input{algorithms/reflex-vacuum-agent-
algorithm}
 Classes of Agent
• Four basic classes in order of increasing
generality:
• Simple reflex agents
• Model-based reflex agents
• Goal-based agents
• Utility-based agents
Simple reflex agents
 Simple reflex agents
• \input{algorithms/d-agent-algorithm}
Model-based reflex agents
 Model-based reflex agents
• \input{algorithms/d+-agent-algorithm}
Goal-based agents
Utility-based agents
Learning agents