Rational agents

An agent should strive to "do the right thing", based on what it can perceive and the actions it can perform. The right action is the one that will cause the agent to be most successful

Performance measure: An objective criterion for success of an agent's behavior

E.g., performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner agent could be amount of dirt cleaned up with penalty for amount of time taken, amount of electricity consumed, amount of noise generated, etc.

Better: One point for a clean square at each time unit

Rational Agent: 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.

Rationality is distinct from omniscience (all-knowing with infinite knowledge)
Rationality <> Perfection



‘Looking’ actions - information gathering, exploration


Learning
Not completely known environment
Improve, not all information from the designer

An agent is autonomous if its behavior is determined by its own experience (with ability to learn and adapt)