Dynamic Environments

If the ultimate design goal of an architecture is to create an agent that operates in a variety of real world environments it is necessary to include some mechanisms that allow the agent to operate in a dynamic environment: one that changes over time independent of the actions of the agent. Certainly there are real world environments that are not dynamic but static; but these are usually controlled situations that are limited in size and scope and thus not representative of the full range of environments in which we may like to utilize a generally intelligent agent. Furthermore, there may be dynamic simulated environments in which an intelligent agent could be put to good use. For instance, an intelligent agent could be used to direct dynamic truck routing from a central location.

Traditional planning systems have had trouble dealing with dynamic environments. In particular, issues such as truth maintenance in the agent's symbolic world model and replanning in response to changes in the environment must be addressed. These capabilities have been incorporated into several planning-type architectures but often reactivity is sacrificed due the complexity of integrating detailed sensory data with a world model. One approach to this problem is to eliminate the planning component altogether as is done in subsumption-type architectures.

Architectures having this environment include:


Go to a List of Common Environmental Considerations.

Return to the Table of Contents


Current Location: Environments-Dynamic Environments