Generality

The basic agent is intended for domains where supervisors need mechanisms for natural language input and output for the system. Since sensing and manipulation are reduced to symbolic acts in a simulated world, it is unclear how successful the system would be in a real world situation. In addition, there is little discussion of what types of learning are possible, which seems important since the requirement for complete domain knowledge seriously limits the number of applicable domains.

However, it can function even in environments presenting information in English and requiring direct natural language output. The language representations used by the basic agent can easily be extended beyond the Seaworld domain of Homer, though the authors themselves express reservations about expressing spatial or visual concepts like "edge" or "corner". These are limitations of the text interpreter and generator; the planner seems sufficiently general to handle the extensions.


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