While building robots, several problems must be solved, such as perception, action, and
decision. The decision part is solved using BBS when the robot will have to take quick
decisions, be situated in a dynamic environment, and perhaps learn from its experience. But
also the motion and perception tend to be biologically inspired.
1.3.1.1. Why do we build intelligent robots?
Or what for, do we build intelligent robots? Some people might answer:
• Because they are nice expensive toys.
• Because researchers have nothing better to do.
• Because they are useful in industry.
• Because a university with a robot prowling its hallways is in.
• Because researchers like to play god.
• All of the above.
Perhaps all of them might be applied in some cases, but none is the main reason to
develop robots.
We would agree that robots are built in order to develop synthetic theories of animals
and humans (Steels, 1995). By building robots, we understand how do the processes of
perception, action, decision, integration of information, and interaction take place in natural
systems. If the robot has no usefulness per se, it does not matter. Robots in AI are not built
mainly to be useful. How useful is a twenty-thousand-dollars robot that knows how to go for
coffee? The point is to understand how are we capable of doing so. Of course, once you know
the rules of the game, you can change them.
1.3.2. Software agents
“Agents are objects with soul.”
—A. Guzman Arenas
Software agents have been inspired in AI and in the computer sciences’ theory of
objects. We can say that they are programmes with agent properties. There are many
definitions of software agents, and some authors may have weaker or stronger notions of an
agency (Genesereth and Ketchpel, 1994; Wooldridge and Jennings, 1995; Russell and Norvig,
1994; Gershenson, 1998b). Since there are a wide variety of definitions of software agents, we
will give a loose definition.
A software agent is a programme that has some autonomy. He is in an environment,
which he might perceive and act upon. He has a specific goal or function, which he will try to
complete. He might interact with other agents, which will make him social. Examples of agents
may go from a UNIX daemon, to a spider (an agent who crawls in the web); from a computer
game character, to a personal digital assistant (PDA). Agents might be embedded in other
agents.
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