Intelligent Agents

Chapter 2
 Outline
• Agents and environments
• Rationality
• PEAS (Performance measure,
Environment, Actuators, Sensors)
• Environment types
• Agent types
 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 f maps from percept histories P* to

actions A :
The agent program runs on the physical architecture to
produce A.
agent = architecture + program

[f: P*  A]
 Terminologies
• Percept: the agent’s perceptual inputs
• Percept sequence: the complete history of
everything the agent has perceived
• Agent function maps any given percept
sequence to an action [f: p*  A]
• The agent program runs on the physical
architecture to produce f
• Agent = architecture + program
 Vacuum-cleaner world

• Percepts: location and contents, [A , Dirty]

•
• Actions: Left, Right, Suck, NoOp
• Function : (agent keeps Right and Left if both rooms are
clean)
 Vacuum-cleaner world

Percept Action
[A, Clean] Right
[A, Dirty] Suck
[B, Clean] Left
[B, Dirty] Suck
[A, Clean] [B, Clean] Nop
Sequence of
percepts
 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.
– EX: Performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner agent:
- amount of dirt cleaned up,
- amount of time taken,
- amount of electricity consumed,
- amount of noise generated, etc.
• Performance measure: An objective criterion for
success of an agent's behavior.
 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 some
built-in knowledge the agent has about the
environment.
• The performance measure that defines the criterion of
success:
– The agent’s percept sequence to data.
– The agent’s prior knowledge of the environment.
– The actions that the agent can perform.
 Rational agents
• Is a vacuum-agent rational? (Depends!)
• Performance measure
– amount of dirt cleaned up,
– amount of time taken,
– amount of electricity consumed,
– amount of noise generated, etc..
• A priori knowledge of the environment
– Geography of the environment is known (two squares,
A is on left and B is on right, etc.).
– Perception is trustable (no illusion).
– Sucking cleans the current square .
 Rational agents
• The Actions the agent can perform
– Left, right, suck.
• Agent percepts sequence to date
– [location, dirt]
• Possible extensions
– The agent have partial memory (reasoning percept
histories).
– The geography of the environment is unknown.
– The agent cannot percept its current location.
– Agent can learn from experience.
 Rational agents
• Rationality is distinct from omniscience (all-
knowing with infinite knowledge/ agent knows
the actual outcome of its actions, and can act
accordingly)
• An agent is autonomous if its behavior is
determined by its own experience (with ability
to learn and adapt).
• Agents can perform actions in order to modify
future percepts so as to obtain useful
information (information gathering, exploration).
 Environments
• An environment is everything in the world which
surrounds the agent but not part of it.
• Task environment of an agent: There a frame work
to define the task environment of an agent called
PEAS.
– Performance measure
– Environment
– Actuators
– Sensors
• Must first specify the setting for intelligent
agent design
 PEAS
• 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/typed word
 Environment types
There are various types of environment form the agent point of
view.
•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. e.g color.
• Single agent (vs. multiagent): An agent operating by
itself in an environment. E.g, video game with many
enemies.
 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
– Describes agent behavior
• Job of AI: design an agent program which
implements the agent function
– Describes how the agent works
• Program must suit/outfit the architecture
• Inputs:
– Agent Program: is specific implementation, & control the
agent actuators.
– Agent Function: mapping percept history to action
Agent Functions and Programs
• One agent function (or a small
equivalence class) is rational
• Aim: find a way to implement the rational
agent function concisely
 Agent structure
• Agent = architecture + program
– Architecture: computing device, sensors,
actuators
– Program: what you design to implement
agent function, mapping percepts to actions
• Inputs
– Agent function: entire percept history
– Agent program: current percept; if function
needs percept history, agent must ‘remember’
it
 Agent types
• Five basic types agent based on degree of
perceived intelligence and capacity.
– Simple reflex agents
– Model-based reflex agents
– Goal-based agents
– Utility-based agents
– Learning agents
 Simple reflex agent
• Bases only on the current perception
• It uses just condition-action rules
 The rules are like the form “if … then …”
 efficient but have narrow range of applicability

 Because knowledge sometimes cannot be

stated explicitly
 Work only
 if the environment is fully observable
Simple reflex agents
Pseudo-code
 Simple reflex agents
• Pros:
– Simple
• Cons:
– Limited intelligence (current perception)
– For this to produce rational agents the
environment must be…? Observable.
– Often yield infinite loops
• Randomization can help but only so much
 Model-based Reflex Agents
For the world that is partially observable
 the agent has to keep track of an internal state
 That depends on the percept history
 Reflecting some of the unobserved aspects

 E.g., driving a car and changing lane/path/track

 Works by finding a rule whose condition matches

current situation
Requiring two types of knowledge
 How the world evolves independently of the agent

 How the agent’s actions affect the world

Model-based Reflex Agents
 Example Table Agent
With Internal State
IF THEN
Saw an object ahead, Go straight
and turned right, and
it’s now clear ahead
Saw an object Ahead, Halt
turned right, and object
ahead again
See no objects ahead Go straight

See an object ahead Turn randomly

Model-based Reflex Agents

The agent is with memory

 Goal-based agents
Focuses only on reaching the goal set and the
decision took by the agent is based on how far it is
currently from their goal.
The goal is another issue to achieve
 Judgment of rationality / correctness
Actions chosen  goals, based on
 the current state
 the current percept
 More flexible
 Goal-based agents
Conclusion
 Goal-based agents are less efficient
 but more flexible
 Agent  Different goals  different tasks
 Search and planning
 two other sub-fields in AI
 to find out the action sequences to achieve its goal
Goal based agent
 Utility-based agents
Goals alone are not enough
 to generate high-quality behavior
 E.g. meals in Canteen, good or not ?

Many action sequences  the goals

 some are better and some worse
 If goal means success,

 then utility means the degree of success

(how successful it is)
 Utility-based agents
Useful when there are multiple choices
It is said state A has higher utility
 If state A is more preferred than others
Utility is therefore a function
 That maps a state onto a real number
 The degree of success
 Utility-based agents
Utility has several advantages:
 When there are conflicting goals,
 Only some of the goals but not all can be
achieved
 utility describes the appropriate trade-off

 When there are several goals

 None of them are achieved certainly
 utility provides a way for the decision-making
Utility-based agents
 Learning Agents
After an agent is programmed, can it work
immediately?
 No, it still need teaching
In AI,
 Once an agent is done
 We teach it by giving it a set of examples
 Test it by using another set of examples

We then say the agent learns

 A learning agent
 It can learn from past expriance
 Learning Agents
Four conceptual components
 Learning element
 Making improvement
 Performance element
 Selecting external actions
 Critic
 Tells the Learning element how well the agent is doing with
respect to fixed performance standard.
(Feedback from user or examples, good or not?)
 Problem generator
 Suggest actions that will lead to new and informative
experiences.
Learning Agents
 Summary
• Agents interact with environments through actuators and
sensors
• agent function defines behavior
• Performance measure evaluates environment sequence
• Perfectly rational agent maximizes expected
performance
• PEAS descriptions define task environments
• Dimensions: observable? Deterministic? Episodic?
Static? Discrete? Single-agent?
• Architectures(agents): reflex, reflex with state, goal-
based, utility-based
 Exercise
• Select a suitable agent design for:
– Robot soccer player
– Shopping for used AI books on the Internet
No. Agent Sensor Environment Action Performance
measure
1. Face
detection
agent
2. Waiter robot
agent
3. Security
agent
4.