Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice
Knowl. Eng. Rev., 10 (2):
115--152 (1995)Abstract
The concept of an agent has become important in both Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and mainstream computer science. Our aim in this
paper is to point the reader at what we perceive to be the most important
theoretical and practical issues associated with the design and construction
of intelligent agents. For convenience, we divide these issues into
three areas (though as the reader will see, the divisions are at
times somewhat arbitrary). Agent theory is concerned with
the question of what an agent is, and the use of mathematical formalisms
for representing and reasoning about the properties of agents. Agent
architectures can be thought of as software engineering models of
agents; researchers in this area are primarily concerned with the
problem of designing software or hardware systems that will satisfy
the properties specified by agent theorists. Finally, agent
languages are software systems
for programming and experimenting with agents; these languages may
embody principles proposed by theorists. The paper is not
intended to serve as a tutorial introduction to all the issues mentioned;
we hope instead simply to identify the most important issues, and
point to work that elaborates on them. The article includes a short
review of current and potential applications of agent technology.
