Architectures that Operate in a Dynamic Environment
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. Certainly there are real world environments that are
not dynamic; 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 alltogether
as is done in
subsumtion-type architectures .
The following architectures have mechanisms for operating in a dynamic
environment:
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