Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science8 Jagdish Bhatta The emergence of intelligent agents (1995 - present): The whole agent problem:

: How does an agent act/behave embedded in real environments with continuous sensoryinputs Applications of AI Autonomous planning and scheduling Game playing Autonomous Control Diagnosis Logistics Planning Robotics Language understanding and problem solving Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science9 Jagdish Bhatta Intelligent Agents An Intelligent Agent perceives it environment via sensors and acts rationally upon thatenvironment with its effectors (actuators). Hence, an agent gets percepts one at a time, andmaps this percept sequence to actions. Properties of the agent Autonomous Interacts with other agents plus the environment Reactive to the environment

Pro-active (goal- directed) What do you mean, sensors/percepts and effectors/actions? For Humans Sensors : Eyes (vision), ears (hearing), skin (touch), tongue (gestation), nose(olfaction), neuromuscular system (proprioception) Percepts : At the lowest level electrical signals from these sensors After preprocessing objects in the visual field (location, textures, colors, ), auditory streams (pitch, loudness, direction), Effectors : limbs, digits, eyes, tongue, .. Actions : lift a finger, turn left, walk, run, carry an object, The Point: percepts and actions need to be carefully defined, possibly at different levels of abstraction

Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science10 Jagdish Bhatta A more specific example: Automated taxi driving system Percepts : Video, sonar, speedometer, odometer, engine sensors, keyboard input, microphone, GPS, Actions : Steer, accelerate, brake, horn, speak/display, Goals : Maintain safety, reach destination, maximize profits (fuel, tire wear), obeylaws, provide passenger comfort,

Environment :U rban streets, freeways, traffic, pedestrians, weather, customers, [ Different aspects of driving may require different types of agent programs!]Challenge!! Compare Software with an agentCompare Human with an agent Percept: The Agents perceptual inputs at any given instant. Percept Sequence: The complete history of everything the agent has ever perceived.The agent function is mathematical concept that maps percept sequence to actions.The agent function will internally be represented by the agent program. The agent program is concrete implementation of agent function it runs on the physical architecture to produce f . The vacuum-cleaner world: Example of AgentEnvironment: square A and B Percepts: [location and content] E.g. [A, Dirty] Actions: left, right, suck, and no-op f : P * A

Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science11 Jagdish Bhatta The concept of rationality A rational agent is one that does the right thing. Every entry in the table is filled out correctly.What is the right thing? Right action is the one that will cause the agent to be most successful.Therefore we need some way to measure success of an agent. Performance measures are thecriterion for success of an agent behavior.E.g., performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner agent could be amount of dirt cleaned up,amount of time taken, amount of electricity consumed, amount of noise generated, etc. It is better to design Performance measure according to what is wanted in the environment instead of how the agents should behave. It is not easy task to choose the performance measure of an agent. For example if the performance measure for automated vacuum cleaner is The amount of dirt cleaned within acer

tain time Then a ration al agent can maximize this performance by cleaning up the dirt , then dumping it all on the floor, then cleaning it up again , and so on. Therefore How cleanthe floor is is better choice for performance measure of vacuum cleaner .What is rational at a given time depends on four things: Performance measure, Prior environment knowledge, Actions, Percept sequence to date (sensors). Definition : A rational agent chooses whichever action maximizes the expected value of the performance measure given the percept sequence to date and prior environment knowledge. Percept sequence Action [A,Clean] Right [A, Dirty] Suck [B, Clean] Left [B, Dirty] Suck .

Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science12 Jagdish Bhatta Environments To design a rational agent we must specify its task environment. Task environment means:PEAS description of the environment: Performance Environment Actuators Sensors Example: Fully automated taxi: PEAS description of the environment: Performance: Safety, destination, profits, legality, comfort Environment: Streets/freeways, other traffic, pedestrians, weather,, Actuators: Steering, accelerating, brake, horn, speaker/display, Sensors:

Video, sonar, speedometer, engine sensors, keyboard, GPS,

Unit- 2: AI Cognitive Science13 Jagdish Bhatta Knowledge RepresentationKnowledge: Knowledge is a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject or a domain. Knowledge isalso the sum of what is currently known. Knowledge is the sum of what is known: the body of truth, information, and principles a cquired by mankind. Or, "Knowledge is what I know, Information is what we know." There are many other definitions such as:- Knowledge is "information combined with experience, context, interpretation, andreflection. It is a high-value form of information that is ready to apply to decisions andactions." (T. Davenport et al., 1998) Knowledge is human expertise stored in a persons mind, gained through experience, andinteraction with the persons environment." (Sunasee and Sewery, 2002) Knowledge is information evaluated and organized by the human mind so that it can be used purposefully, e.g., conclusions or explanations." (Rousa, 2002) Knowledge consists of information that has been: interpreted, categorised, applied, experienced and revised.In general, knowledge is more than just data, it consist of: facts, ideas, beliefs, heuristics,associations, rules, abstractions, relationships, customs.Research literature classifies knowledge as follows:Classification-based Knowledge Ability to classify information Decision-oriented Knowledge

Choosing the best option Descriptive knowledge State of some world (heuristic) Procedural knowledge How to do somethingReasoning knowledge What conclusion is valid in what situation? Assimilative knowledge What its impact is? Knowledge Representation Knowledge representation (KR) is the study of how knowledge about the world can berepresented and what kinds of reasoning can be done with that knowledge. KnowledgeRepresentation is the method used to encode knowledge in Intelligent Systems.

heuristics

A heuristic is a way of trying to discover something or an idea imbedded in a program. The term is used variously in AI. Heuristic functions are used in some approaches to search to measure how far a node in a search tree seems to be from a goal. Heuristic predicates that compare two nodes in a search tree to see if one is better than the other, i.e. constitutes an advance toward the goal, may be more useful. [My opinion].

Applications of AI
Q. What are the applications of AI? A. Here are some. game playing You can buy machines that can play master level chess for a few hundred dollars. There is some AI in them, but they play well against people mainly through brute force computation--looking at hundreds of thousands of positions. To beat a world champion by brute force and known reliable heuristics requires being able to look at 200 million positions per second. speech recognition In the 1990s, computer speech recognition reached a practical level for limited purposes. Thus United Airlines has replaced its keyboard tree for flight information by a system using speech recognition of flight numbers and city names. It is quite convenient. On the the other hand, while it is possible to instruct some computers using speech, most users have gone back to the keyboard and the mouse as still more convenient. understanding natural language Just getting a sequence of words into a computer is not enough. Parsing sentences is not enough either. The computer has to be provided with an understanding of the domain the text is about, and this is presently possible only for very limited domains. computer vision The world is composed of three-dimensional objects, but the inputs to the human eye and computers' TV cameras are two dimensional. Some useful programs can work solely in two dimensions, but full computer vision requires partial three-dimensional information that is not just a set of two-dimensional views. At present there are only limited ways of representing three-dimensional information directly, and they are not as good as what humans evidently use. expert systems A ``knowledge engineer'' interviews experts in a certain domain and tries to embody their knowledge in a computer program for carrying out some task. How well this works depends on whether the intellectual mechanisms required for the task are within the present state of AI. When this turned out not to be so, there were many disappointing results. One of the first expert systems was MYCIN in 1974, which diagnosed bacterial infections of the blood and suggested treatments. It did better than medical students or practicing doctors, provided its limitations were observed. Namely, its ontology included bacteria, symptoms, and treatments and did not include patients, doctors, hospitals, death, recovery, and events occurring in time. Its interactions depended on a single patient being considered. Since the

experts consulted by the knowledge engineers knew about patients, doctors, death, recovery, etc., it is clear that the knowledge engineers forced what the experts told them into a predetermined framework. In the present state of AI, this has to be true. The usefulness of current expert systems depends on their users having common sense. heuristic classification One of the most feasible kinds of expert system given the present knowledge of AI is to put some information in one of a fixed set of categories using several sources of information. An example is advising whether to accept a proposed credit card purchase. Information is available about the owner of the credit card, his record of payment and also about the item he is buying and about the establishment from which he is buying it (e.g., about whether there have been previous credit card frauds at this establishment).

Microwave Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

No cables needed between sites Multiple channels available Wide bandwidth Used for long haul or high capacity short haul. Requires few amplifiers and repeaters

Disadvantages:

Line-of-sight will be disrupted if any obstacle, such as new buildings, are in the way Signal absorption by the atmosphere. Microwaves suffer from attenuation due to atmospheric conditions. Towers are expensive to build Frequency bands are regulated

Advantage: Able to Transmit Large Quantities of Data

According to "Microwave Communication," microwave radio systems have the capacity to broadcast great quantities of information because of their higher frequencies. They use repeaters (a device that receives the transmitting signal through one antenna, converts it into an electrical signal and retransmits it) to transmit large volumes of data over great distances. Microwave radio communication systems propagate signals through the earth's atmosphere. These signals are sent between transmitters and receivers that lie on top of towers. This allows microwave radio systems to transmit thousands of data channels between two points without relying on a physical transmitting medium (optical fibers or metallic cables).

Advantage: Relatively Low Costs

Microwave communication systems have relatively low construction costs compared with other forms of data transmission, such as wire-line technologies. A microwave communication system does not require physical cables or expensive attenuation equipment (devices that maintain signal strength during transmission). Mountains, hills and rooftops provide inexpensive and accessible bases for microwave transmission towers.

Disadvantage: Line of Sight Technology

Microwave radio systems are a line of sight technology, meaning the signals will not pass through objects (e.g., mountains, buildings and airplanes). This drawback limits microwave communication systems to line of sight operating distances. Signals flow between one fixed point to another, provided no solid obstacle disrupts the flow.

Disadvantage: Subject to Electromagnetic and Other Interference

According to "Rural America at the Crossroads: Networking for the Future," microwave radio signals are affected by electromagnetic interference (EMI). EMI is any disturbance that degrades, obstructs or interrupts the performance of microwave signals. Microwave signal disruption EMI is caused by electric motors, electric power transmission lines, wind turbines, television/radio stations and cell phone transmission towers. Wind turbines, for instance, scatter and diffract TV, radio and microwave signals when placed between signal transmitters and receivers. Microwave radio communication is also affected by heavy moisture, snow, vapor, rain and fog due to rain fade (the absorption of microwave signals by ice, snow or rain, causing signal degradation and distortion).

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