Most of us in IT are interested in Artificial Intelligence and leveraging AI techniques to solve current problems.
Intelligent Agents is one branch of AI and although not as sexy as Neural Nets and other branches, it is perhaps the most widely used.
Agents are everywhere, from viruses, to web crawlers, there are many bits of code with a degree of autonomy.
Definitions of Agents can be found on Wikipedia.
In a nutshell, an Intelligent Agent receives data from its environment and makes decisions based on that data.
Agents work for someone, so there is usually a communication and reporting aspect.
If this sounds like the proxy pattern, than I have done a poor job describing it, please see the Wikipedia article which goes into much more detail.
A classic simplified example of Intelligent Agents is called Sheep and Wolves. In the most simple form, you have Sheep agents, Wolf agents and an environment made up of grass. Sheep eat grass, Wolves eat Sheep. Sheep wander around aimlessly as do Wolves. When a Wolf bumps into a Sheep, it eats it. If all the Sheep are eaten, the Wolves all die. If the Sheep over populate, they die of starvation.
Even this simple model can be expanded to make the problem more ‘real’ and interesting.
For example – the sheep could learn when wolves hunt. The wolves could learn when sheep graze. There could be different species of grass that grow at different rates and have differing nutritional value. Food is not the only resource that animals need, so you could introduce water and shelter. Sheep don’t clone themselves, they must find a mate etc. Sheep have a notoriously low learning rate, so if one sheep discovers a new resource, the others are slow to learn about the new resource, but some do eventually learn.
You can see how fun this could get even for a contrived example.
Northwestern University has provided NetLogo, a great, easy to use and visual way to develop models such as described above.
Go here: NetLogo for more info and to get started.
MIT has a similar system: StarLogo
Before you go all Donatello on me, download NetLogo and explore some of the 100 or so included models.
Soon I will post a simple model which can locate edges in an image. I call it color contouring.
Screen shot of Sheep and Wolves model running in NetLogo.
