The roles of active perception in intelligent agent systems

Abstract

This paper discusses the need to incorporate the notion of active perception in intelligent agent systems. There are two justifications for this proposition. First, we believe perception should receive more attention and some special treatment. Perception is the most direct and effective way to update an agent's beliefs about the status of its environment. In theory, an overwhelming portion of an agent's decisions about its next course of action, or next actions, in either the reactive or deliberative model, should be heavily influenced by what is happening in the environment - this is one of the important characteristics that differentiates agents from the traditional software design paradigm. An agent's internal activities, such as deliberation and means-end analysis, to a large extent, are also driven by what have been sensed. The second justification is that active perception plays an imperative role in situation awareness. Active perception is an important capability that directs an agent's limited attention to the relevant aspects of the environment in an proactive manner. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.