Chapter 2

Question 1

What is an agent

Answer 1

anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through actuators

Question 2

Define percept

Answer 2

the content an agent’s sensors are perceiving

Question 3

Define percept sequence

Answer 3

the complete history of everything the agent has ever perceived

Question 4

Define agent function

Answer 4

maps a given percept sequence to an action

Question 5

Define a rational agent

Answer 5

an agent that does the right thing

For each possible percept sequence, a rational agent should select an action that is expected to maximize its performance measure, given the evidence provided by the percept sequence and whatever built-in knowledge the agent has.

Question 6

Define consequentialism

Answer 6

a notion of determining whether or not a rational agent is doing the right thing by evaluating it’s behavior by its consequences

Question 7

Define performance measure

Answer 7

evaluates any given sequence of environment states

the measurement depends on the user/designer

Question 8

What is an omniscient agent?

Answer 8

an agent that knows the actual outcome of its actions and can act accordingly

omniscience is impossible in reality

Question 9

What does the rational choice of a rational agent depend on?

Answer 9

the percept sequence to date

Question 10

Define information gathering:

Answer 10

the process of collecting information about something

Question 11

Define autonomy

Answer 11

independence or freedom, as of the will or one’s actions; independence, choice

Question 12

A rational agent should be ____
a) omniscient
b) autonomous
c) perfect
e) only a machine

Answer 12

b) autonomous

Question 13

What is a task environment?

Answer 13

the “problems” to which rational agents are the “solutions”

Question 14

What characteristics should be included in a task environmnet?

Answer 14

PEAS
performance (measure)
environment
actuators (actions)
sensors

Question 15

What is a software agent?

Answer 15

a software robot or softbot that performs agents like an intelligent agent

Question 16

Define a fully observable environment

Answer 16

if the agent’s sensors give it access to teh complete state of teh envornment at each point in time

the agent is able to detect all aspects that are relevant to the choice of action (relevance in terms of performance measure)

Question 17

Define a partially observable environment

Answer 17

When only part of an environment is observable

e.g. noisy and inaccurate sensors, parts of the state missing from sensor data (i.e. not being able to tell if a square is dirty or not)

Question 18

Define unobservable environment

Answer 18

when the agent has no sensors at all

Question 19

What is a single-agent