How to Design an Intelligent Agent?

• Definition: An Intelligent Agent perceives it environment via sensors and acts rationally upon that environment with its effectors.

  Hence, an agent gets percepts one at a time, and maps this percept sequence to actions.

• Properties
  • Autonomous
  • Interacts with other agents plus the environment
  • Reactive to the environment
  • Pro-active (goal-directed)

• Rationality => Need a performance measure to say how well a task has been achieved. An ideal rational agent should, for each possible percept sequence, do whatever actions will maximize its performance measure based on (1) the percept sequence, and (2) its built-in and acquired knowledge. Hence includes information gathering, not "rational ignorance."

  Types of performance measures: false alarm and false dismissal rates, speed, resources required, effect on environment, etc.