CHAPTER-II

INTRODUCTION TO INTELLIGENT AGENTS

Mr. Umer Nuri Hawassa University School of Informatics

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Agent
Actuators/

 The agent able to sense the environment with the help of sensors, the
environment percept/detected/observed by the agent through sensors.
 Then the sensors sends the signal or energy to the actuators.
 The actuators performs the action means they converts this signal or energy
into motions.
 So the action is seen on the environment..
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 An agent:
 Is anything that can perceive/observe/detect its
environment through sensors and acts upon that environment
through actuators.
 Agents can be three types:
 A human agent
 Has sensory organs such as eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin and
has actuators such as hands, legs, mouth.
 A robotic agent
 Has cameras and infrared range finders for the sensors, and various
motors/tires used as actuators.
 A software agent
 Has encoded bit strings as its programs and actions (by key strokes)
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 AI agent terminologies
 Sensor
 It is a device which perceives/observes/detects the change
in the environment and sends the information to the other
electronic devices/actuators/effectors
 Actuators/effectors:
 It is component of machine that converts energy into motion.
 It is responsible for moving and controlling of the system.
 It is the device which affects the environment.
 It can be legs, wheels, arms, fingers and display screens.
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 AI Agent Terminology
 Performance Measure of Agent − It is the criteria, which
determines how successful an agent is.
 Behavior of Agent − It is the action that agent performs
after any given sequence of percepts.
 Percept − It is agent’s perceptual inputs at a given instance.

 Percept Sequence − It is the history of all that an agent has

perceived till date.
 Agent Function − It is a map from the precept sequence to
an action
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 Agent Rationality
 Rationality is nothing but status of being reasonable,
sensible, and having good sense of judgment.
 Rationality is concerned with expected actions and
results depending upon what the agent has perceived.
 Performing actions with the aim of obtaining useful
information is an important part of rationality.
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 Ideal Rational Agent

 It
is which has a capable of doing expected actions to
maximize its performance measure, on the basis of:
 Its percept sequence
 Its built-in knowledge base

 They always performs right action, where the right

action means the action that causes the agent to be
most successful in the given percept sequence.
 The problem the agent solves is characterized by
Performance Measure, Environment, Actuators, and
Sensors (PEAS).
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 Rationality of an agent depends on:

 The performance measures, which determine the degree of
success.
 Agent’s Percept Sequence till now.
 The agent’s prior knowledge about the environment.
 The actions that the agent can carry out.

 Structure of Intelligent Agents

 Agent’s structure can be viewed as:
 Agent = Architecture + Agent Program
 Architecture = the machinery that an agent executes on.
 Agent Program = an implementation of an agent function.
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 Types of Agents
 Agents can be grouped into four/five classes based on their
degree of perceived intelligence and capability:
 Simple Reflex Agents: Complete Observation of only current
state
 Model-Based Reflex Agents: partially observable, depends on
the percept history
 Goal-Based Agents: selecting the one which reaches a goal state
 Utility-Based Agents: it bother about happiness
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 Simple reflex agents

 It works only on the basis of current perception and it does
not bother about the previous state in which the system was.
 It ignore the rest of the percept history and act only on the
basis of the current percept.
 Percept history is the history of all that an agent has
perceived till date.
 It is based on the condition-action rule

 A condition-action rule is a rule that maps a state i.e,

condition to an action.
 If the condition is true, then action is taken, else not taken
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Sample figure that shows simple reflex agents

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 Problems with simple reflex agents are:

 They choose actions only based on the current
percept.
 They are rational only if a correct decision is made
only on the basis of current precept.
 Their environment is completely observable.
 Very limited intelligence.
 No knowledge of non-perceptual parts of state.
 Usually too big to generate and store.
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 Model Based Reflex Agent

 It works by finding a rule whose condition matches the
current situation.
 It can handle partially observable environments by use of
model about the world.
 The agent has to keep track of internal state which is
adjusted by each percept and that depends on the percept
history.
 Updating the state requires the information about:
 how the world evolves in-dependently from the agent, and
 how the agent actions affects the world.
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 Goal Based Agent

 These kinds of agents take decision based on how far they
are currently from their goal(description of desirable
situations).
 Their every action is intended to reduce its distance from
goal.
 This allows the agent a way to choose among multiple
possibilities, selecting the one which reaches a goal state.
 The knowledge that supports its decisions is represented
explicitly and can be modified, which makes these agents
more flexible.
 They usually require search and planning. The goal based
agent’s behavior can easily be changed.
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 Goal Based Agent

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 Utility Based Agents

 The agents which are developed having their end uses as building
blocks are called utility based agents.
 When there are multiple possible alternatives, then to decide which one
is best, utility based agents are used.
 They choose actions based on a preference(utility) for each state.
Sometimes achieving the desired goal is not enough.
 We may look for quicker, safer, cheaper trip to reach a destination.
 Agent happiness should be taken into consideration.
 Utility describes how “happy” the agent is.
 Because of the uncertainty in the world, a utility agent chooses the action
that maximizes the expected utility.
 A utility function maps a state onto a real number which describes the
associated degree of happiness.
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Goals are inadequate when:

• There are conflicting goals, out of which only few can be achieved.
• Goals have some uncertainty of being achieved and you need to weigh
likelihood of success against the importance of a goal.
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 Properties of an environment
 The environment has multifold properties:
 Discrete / Continuous
 Ifthere are a limited number of distinct, clearly defined,
states of the environment, the environment is discrete (For
example, chess); otherwise it is continuous (For example,
driving).
 Complete Observable / Partially Observable
 Ifit is possible to determine the complete state of the
environment at each time point from the percepts it is
observable; otherwise it is only partially observable.
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 Properties of an environment
 Static / Dynamic
 Ifthe environment does not change while an agent is acting,
then it is static; otherwise it is dynamic.
 Single agent / Multiple agents
 The environment may contain other agents which may be of
the same or different kind as that of the agent.
 Accessible / Inaccessible
 Ifthe agent’s sensory apparatus can have access to the
complete state of the environment, then the environment is
accessible to that agent.
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 Deterministic / Non-deterministic
 Ifthe next state of the environment is completely determined
by the current state and the actions of the agent, then the
environment is deterministic; otherwise it is non-deterministic.
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