AI AGENTS

AGENT-EXPLANATION
• The agents sense the environment through sensors and act on their environment
through actuators.
• An Agent runs in the cycle of
• Perceiving
• thinking
• acting
• Human-Agent: A human agent has eyes, ears, and other organs which work for
sensors and hand, legs, vocal tract work for actuators.
• Robotic Agent: A robotic agent can have cameras, infrared range finder, NLP for
sensors and various motors for actuators.
• Software Agent: Software agent can have keystrokes, file contents as sensory
input and act on those inputs and display output on the screen.
SENSOR-ACTUATOR-EFFECTOR
• Sensor: Sensor is a device which detects the change in the
environment and sends the information to other electronic devices.
An agent observes its environment through sensors.
• Actuators: Actuators are the component of machines that converts
energy into motion. The actuators are only responsible for moving
and controlling a system.
• Effectors: Effectors are the devices which affect the environment.
Effectors can be legs, wheels, arms, fingers, wings, fins, and display
screen.
CONT….
Intelligent Agents:

• An intelligent agent is an autonomous entity which act upon an

environment using sensors and actuators for achieving goals.
• An intelligent agent may learn from the environment to achieve their
goals.
• A thermostat is an example of an intelligent agent.
Rule 1: An AI agent must have the ability to perceive the environment.
Rule 2: The observation must be used to make decisions.
Rule 3: Decision should result in an action.
Rule 4: The action taken by an AI agent must be a rational action.
Rational Agent

• A rational agent is an agent which has clear preference, models

uncertainty, and acts in a way to maximize its performance measure
with all possible actions.
• A rational agent is said to perform the right things. AI is about
creating rational agents to use for game theory and decision theory
for various real-world scenarios.
Rationality
• The rationality of an agent is measured by its performance measure.
Rationality can be judged on the basis of following points

• Performance measure which defines the success criterion.

• Agent prior knowledge of its environment.
• Best possible actions that an agent can perform.
• The sequence of percepts.
PEAS Representation
PEAS is a type of model on which an AI agent works upon. When we
define an AI agent or rational agent, then we can group its properties
under PEAS representation model. It is made up of four words:

P: Performance measure
E: Environment
A: Actuators
S: Sensors
PEAS for self-driving cars

Performance: Safety, time, legal drive, comfort

Environment: Roads, other vehicles, road signs, pedestrian

Actuators: Steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn

Sensors: Camera, GPS, speedometer, odometer, accelerometer, sonar.

Example of Agents with their PEAS representation
Agent Performance measure Environment Actuators Sensors

1. Medical Diagnose •Healthy patient •Patient •Tests Keyboard

•Minimized cost •Hospital •Treatments (Entry of symptoms)
•Staff

2. Vacuum Cleaner •Cleanness •Room •Wheels •Camera

•Efficiency •Table •Brushes •Dirt detection sensor
•Battery life •Wood floor •Vacuum Extractor •Cliff sensor
•Security •Carpet •Bump Sensor
•Various obstacles •Infrared Wall Sensor

3. Interactive •Maximize students •Set of Students, •Display Exercises Keyboard Entry

English tutor score on test. testing Agency •Suggestions
•Corrections
Features of Environment
• Fully observable vs Partially Observable
• Static vs Dynamic
• Discrete vs Continuous
• Deterministic vs Stochastic
• Single-agent vs Multi-agent
• Episodic vs sequential
• Known vs Unknown
• Accessible vs Inaccessible
Fully observable vs Partially Observable:

• If an agent sensor can sense or access the complete state of an

environment at each point of time then it is a fully
observable environment, else it is partially observable.
• A fully observable environment is easy as there is no need to maintain
the internal state to keep track history of the world.
• An agent with no sensors in all environments then such an
environment is called as unobservable.
Deterministic vs Stochastic

• If an agent's current state and selected action can completely

determine the next state of the environment, then such environment
is called a deterministic environment.
• A stochastic environment is random in nature and cannot be
determined completely by an agent.
• In a deterministic, fully observable environment, agent does not need
to worry about uncertainty.
Episodic vs Sequential

• In an episodic environment, there is a series of one-shot actions, and

only the current percept is required for the action.

• However, in Sequential environment, an agent requires memory of

past actions to determine the next best actions.
Single-agent vs Multi-agent

• If only one agent is involved in an environment, and operating by

itself then such an environment is called single agent environment.

• However, if multiple agents are operating in an environment, then

such an environment is called a multi-agent environment.

• The agent design problems in the multi-agent environment are

different from single agent environment.
Static vs Dynamic

• If the environment can change itself while an agent is deliberating

then such environment is called a dynamic environment else it is
called a static environment.
• Static environments are easy to deal because an agent does not need
to continue looking at the world while deciding for an action.
• However for dynamic environment, agents need to keep looking at
the world at each action.
• Taxi driving is an example of a dynamic environment whereas
Crossword puzzles are an example of a static environment.
Discrete vs Continuous

• If in an environment there are a finite number of percepts and actions

that can be performed within it, then such an environment is called a
discrete environment else it is called continuous environment.

• A chess game comes under discrete environment as there is a finite

number of moves that can be performed.

• A self-driving car is an example of a continuous environment.

Known vs Unknown

• Known and unknown are not actually a feature of an environment, but

it is an agent's state of knowledge to perform an action.

• In a known environment, the results for all actions are known to the
agent. While in unknown environment, agent needs to learn how it
works in order to perform an action.

• It is quite possible that a known environment to be partially observable

and an Unknown environment to be fully observable.
Accessible vs Inaccessible

• If an agent can obtain complete and accurate information about the

state's environment, then such an environment is called an Accessible
environment else it is called inaccessible.

• An empty room whose state can be defined by its temperature is an

example of an accessible environment.

• Information about an event on earth is an example of Inaccessible

environment.
Structure of an AI Agent
• The task of AI is to design an agent program which implements the agent
function. The structure of an intelligent agent is a combination of
architecture and agent program. It can be viewed as:

Agent = Architecture + Agent program

Following are the main three terms involved in the structure of an AI agent:
• Architecture: Architecture is machinery that an AI agent executes on.
• Agent Function: Agent function is used to map a percept to an action.
f:P* → A
• Agent program: Agent program is an implementation of agent function.
An agent program executes on the physical architecture to produce
function f.
Types of AI Agents

• Agents can be grouped into five classes based on their degree of

perceived intelligence and capability.

Simple Reflex Agent

Model-based reflex agent
Goal-based agents
Utility-based agent
Learning agent
Simple Reflex agent
• The Simple reflex agents are the simplest agents. These agents take decisions
on the basis of the current percepts and ignore the rest of the percept
history.
• These agents only succeed in the fully observable environment.
• The Simple reflex agent does not consider any part of percepts history during
their decision and action process.
• The Simple reflex agent works on Condition-action rule, which means it maps
the current state to action. Such as a Room Cleaner agent, it works only if
there is dirt in the room.
• Problems for the simple reflex agent design approach:
• They have very limited intelligence
• They do not have knowledge of non-perceptual parts of the current state
• Mostly too big to generate and to store.
• Not adaptive to changes in the environment.
Model-based reflex agent
• The Model-based agent can work in a partially observable
environment, and track the situation.
• A model-based agent has two important factors:
• Model: It is knowledge about "how things happen in the world," so it is called
a Model-based agent.
• Internal State: It is a representation of the current state based on percept
history.
• These agents have the model, "which is knowledge of the world" and
based on the model they perform actions.
• Updating the agent state requires information about:
• How the world evolves
• How the agent's action affects the world.
Goal-based agents

• The knowledge of the current state environment is not always

sufficient to decide for an agent to what to do.
• The agent needs to know its goal which describes desirable situations.
• Goal-based agents expand the capabilities of the model-based agent
by having the "goal" information.
• They choose an action, so that they can achieve the goal.
• These agents may have to consider a long sequence of possible
actions before deciding whether the goal is achieved or not. Such
considerations of different scenario are called searching and planning,
which makes an agent proactive.
Utility-based agents

• These agents are similar to the goal-based agent but provide an extra
component of utility measurement which makes them different by
providing a measure of success at a given state.
• Utility-based agent act based not only goals but also the best way to
achieve the goal.
• The Utility-based agent is useful when there are multiple possible
alternatives, and an agent has to choose in order to perform the best
action.
• The utility function maps each state to a real number to check how
efficiently each action achieves the goals.
Learning Agents
• A learning agent in AI is the type of agent which can learn from its past
experiences, or it has learning capabilities.
• It starts to act with basic knowledge and then able to act and adapt
automatically through learning.
• A learning agent has mainly four conceptual components, which are:
• Learning element: It is responsible for making improvements by learning from
environment
• Critic: Learning element takes feedback from critic which describes that how
well the agent is doing with respect to a fixed performance standard.
• Performance element: It is responsible for selecting external action
• Problem generator: This component is responsible for suggesting actions that
will lead to new and informative experiences.
• Hence, learning agents are able to learn, analyze performance, and look
for new ways to improve the performance.