Agents and Environment

Introduction to Agents

An agent acts in an environment.

Environment

·         Percepts

·         Actions

·         Agent

An agent perceives its environment through sensors. The complete set of inputs at a given

time is called a percept. The current percept, or a sequence of percepts can influence the

actions of an agent.

The agent can change the environment through actuators or effectors.

An operation involving an effector is called an action.

Actions can be grouped into action

sequences. The agent can have goals which it tries to achieve.

Thus, an agent can be looked upon as a system that implements a mapping from

percept sequences to actions.

A performance measure has to be used in order to evaluate an agent.

An autonomous agent decides autonomously which action to take in the current

situation to maximize progress towards its goals.