A Real Environment

A real environment is simply the real world. The real world is dynamic . How the architecture handles this is very important, and a central issue to operating in the real world. The real world also contains an infinite amount of knowledge. How does the agent deal with this combinatorial explosion? The speed of the agent is important in the real world. Some agents may initially be slow to respond as they are learning . Related to this is the propery that the real world has levels of importance , and the agent may want to react quicker or differently to certain thing. Another related issue is the limited time available to make a decision.

Some architecture are designed to operate only in a simulated environment. This could mean a model of the real world, such as a office, with such limitations as no people. It could also mean a world that exists only in the mind of the architecture, such as the blocks world.

Architectures which function in a real environment:

ATLANTIS (E. Gat)
Theo (T. M. Mitchell and others)
Icarus (P. Langley and others)
Subsumption Architecture (R. A. Brooks)
MAX (D. Kuokka)
SOAR (J. Laird, P. Rosenbloom, and others)
RALPH-MEA (G. Ogasawara)
ERE (M. Drummond and others)

Architectures which function in a virtual or simulated environment:

Prodigy (J. Carbonell, C. Knoblock and S. Minton)
TETON (K. Vanlehn and W. Ball)
HOMER (S. Vere and T. Bickmore)
Guardian (B. Hayes-Roth)

Other characteristics of the Environment and Agent Body

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