An AI system is composed of an agent and its environment. The agents act
in their environment. The environment may contain other agents.
What are Agent and Environment?
An agent is anything that can perceive
its environment through sensors and acts upon that environment
through effectors.
•A human agent has sensory organs such as eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin
parallel to the sensors, and other organs such as hands, legs, mouth, for
effectors.
•A robotic agent replaces cameras and infrared range finders for the sensors,
and various motors and actuators for effectors.
•A software agent has encoded bit strings as its programs and actions.
Agent Terminology
•Performance Measure of Agent − It is the criteria, which determines how
successful an agent is.
•Behavior of Agent − It is the action that agent performs after any given
sequence of percepts.
•Percept − It is agent’s perceptual inputs at a given instance.
•Percept Sequence − It is the history of all that an agent has perceived till date.
•Agent Function − It is a map from the precept sequence to an action.
