The first of these is the Simple Reflex Agent . Such an agent has built in production or condition-action rules. One limitation is that the sensors at any given time might only be presenting an incomplete view of the environment. Such agents are called Reflex Agents with State Memory . An important aspect that is missing from our discussion of agents is that of goals driving the agent.
Reflex agents execute actions based entirely on their internal production rules.
However, in some agents that are trying to achieve a certain goal, a decision has to be made about which of many actions to execute. In these Goal Based Agents , the decision is made based on how well the action will help the agent satisfy its goal. Finally, utility based agents use a score on some performance criteria to choose between multiple actions that can get the agent to the goal. The next item to be studied is the environment of the intelligent agent. We will conclude the lecture with a discussion of which kinds of environment each of the above kinds of agents are best suited for.