Autonomous agents—Beginnings, innings and where we are headed

Abstract

The advent of autonomous agent systems has augmented a new era of innovations that enforce a paradigm shift in the perception of artificial intelligence. The dimension of human intelligence that was empirical to the superiority of the human mind over a machine was autonomous decision making. An autonomous agent has the capability to independently take decisions in real time, on the owner’s behalf without his actual interference. Autonomous agents have become indispensable in the development of artificial intelligence and this chapter places focus on the various specifics of intelligent agents, their functionality and implementation. An example driven approach has been employed to facilitate deeper discussion about the multi faceted questions that surround agent systems such as rational agents and the concept of rationality; the physical necessities and the driving force of the system; the inherent subsystems and nested architectures and so on. Further, mobile technology has played a major role in the introduction, upliftment and resurrection of several disruptive technologies in the past. Likewise, mobile technology has contributed significantly towards the speed and accessibility of autonomous agent systems. A significant number of examples in this chapter have been used to enumerate the various angles in which mobile technology aided the evolution of intelligent agents into the cutting edge machines that we know today. Along the way, distributed architectures and internet of things (IoT) have also influenced application specific use cases of agents systems, whose understanding induces a better perspective on the breadth of the autonomous agents. Moreover, the chapter employs numerous case studies and working examples of the agents that have taken academia and the industry by storm, learning from their implementation and functionality to facilitate inspiration, independent ideation and subject matter expertise in future projects that the reader may wish to pursue.