Building Rational Agents

Lecture 04
Nomica Choudhry
 Objectives

Agents and environments

Rationality
PEAS (Performance measure, Environment, Actuators,
Sensors)
Environment types
Agent types

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 Building Rational Agents
PEAS Description to Specify Task Environments

To design a rational agent we need to specify a task

environment
a problem specification for which the agent is a
solution
PEAS: to specify a task environment
P:Performance Measure
E: Environment
A: Actuators
S: Sensors

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 PEAS: Specifying an automated
taxi driver
Performance measure:
?
Environment:
?
Actuators:
?
Sensors:
?

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 PEAS: Specifying an automated
taxi driver
Performance measure:
safety, speed, legal, comfortable, maximize profits
Environment:
?
Actuators:
?
Sensors:
?

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 PEAS: Specifying an automated
taxi driver
Performance measure:
safe, fast, legal, comfortable, maximize profits
Environment:
roads, other traffic, pedestrians, customers
Actuators:
?
Sensors:
?

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 PEAS: Specifying an automated
taxi driver
Performance measure:
safe, fast, legal, comfortable, maximize profits
Environment:
roads, other traffic, pedestrians, customers
Actuators:
steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn
Sensors:
?

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 PEAS: Specifying an automated
taxi driver
Performance measure:
safe, fast, legal, comfortable, maximize profits
Environment:
roads, other traffic, pedestrians, customers
Actuators:
steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn
Sensors:
cameras, sonar, speedometer, GPS

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 PEAS: Specifying a 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

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 PEAS: Specifying an interactive
English tutor

Performance measure: Maximize student's score on test

Environment: Set of students
Actuators: Screen display (exercises, suggestions,
corrections)
Sensors: Keyboard

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Environment types/Properties of Task Environments

 Fully observable (vs. partially observable):

An agent's sensors give it access to the complete state of the
environment at each point in time.
 e.g a taxi agent doesn’t has sensor to see what other drivers are doing/thinking
….

 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)
Vacuum worlds is Deterministic while Taxi Driving is Stochastic –
as one can exactly predict the behaviour of traffic

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 Environment types

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.
 E.g. an agent sorting defective parts in an assembly line is episodic while a
taxi driving agent or a chess playing agent are sequential ….

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)
 Taxi Driving is Dynamic, Crossword Puzzle solver is static…

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 Environment types – cont’d

Discrete (vs. continuous): A limited number of

distinct, clearly defined percepts and actions.
 e.g. chess game has finite number of states
 Taxi Driving is continuous-state and continuous-time problem …

Single agent (vs. multiagent): An agent operating by

itself in an environment.
 An agent solving a crossword puzzle is in a single agent environment
 Agent in chess playing is in two-agent environment

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 Examples

• The environment type largely determines the agent design

• The real world is (of course) partially observable, stochastic,
sequential, dynamic, continuous, multi-agent
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