Artificial Intelligence

2. Intelligent Agents

Dr. M. Tounsi

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Definition

Is anything:
perceiving its environment through sensors
acting upon its environment through effectors

Example: With Robotic agent

Sensors: Cameras and infrared
Effectors: various motors

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Definitions and Concepts

Rational Agent
One that does the right thing (most successful!)
Issue: how and when to evaluate the agents success ?

Performance Measure

Criteria that determines how successful an agent is

Percept Sequence

Everything that the agent has perceived so far

Ideal Rational Agent

Should do whatever action is expected to maximize its

performance measure based on percept sequence and whatever
build-in knowledge the agent has

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

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.

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

PEAS

PEAS: Performance measure, Environment,

Actuators, Sensors
Definition: Actuator = Effector
Must first specify the setting for intelligent agent design

Example: 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

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

PEAS

Agent: Medical diagnosis system

Performance measure: Healthy patient,
minimize costs,
Environment: Patient, hospital, staff
Actuators: Screen display (questions, tests,
diagnoses, treatments, referrals)
Sensors: Keyboard (entry of symptoms,
findings, patient's answers)

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

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

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

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

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Agent functions and programs

An agent is represented by the agent function

which maps percept sequences to actions

Aim: find a way to implement the rational agent

function concisely

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Table-lookup agent
Function Table-Agent(percept) returns an Action
Static: percepts // sequence, initially empty
Table // table of actions, indexed by
percept, initially fully specified
Begin
Append perept to the end of the percepts
Action := LOOKUP(percepts, Table)
return Action
End
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

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Program Agent
The design of the agent depends on the percepts, actions, goals
and environment
Function SKELETON-AGENT (percept)
Static: memory;
memory <- Update-Mem (memory, percept)
action <- Choose-Best-Action (Memory)
Memory <- Update-Memory(memory, action)

Return action

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Agent types
Four basic types in order of increasing generality:
1.

Simple reflex agents

respond immediately to percepts (i.e.: rules)

2.
3.

Model-based reflex agents

Goal-based agents
act so that they will achieve their goal(s)

4.

Utility-based agents
try to maximize their own happiness

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Example: Simplex reflex agent

Function Reflex-Vacum_agent(location, status)
return actions
{
If status = dirty then action= Clean_ON;
else {
if location = A then action=right;
else action = left;
}
}

CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU

Autonomy

If the agent is based completely on the built-in

knowledge part, such that it pays no attention to its
percepts, then we say that the agent lacks autonomy
If the behavior of the agent is determined by only its own
experience the system is autonomous

AI Agent should have initial knowledge as well as an

ability to learn
CS 370 Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Mohamed Tounsi

PSU