edu.columbia.cs.coms4701.agent
Interface AgentState

All Known Subinterfaces:
BeliefState, GameState

public interface AgentState

The AgentState interface is just a tagging interface used for whatever class an agent program uses to represent state.

It is important to remember that AgentState exists only within the agent's "mind" -- it is not a feature of the environment, though hopefully it bears pretty close resemblance to some aspect of the environment.

The only operations a AgentState must support are isEquals() (with a corresponding hashCode implementation), so that two states may be recognized as identical.

But for any given problem, you'll probably want to develop an AgentState class that supports particular properties -- e.g., in an 8-puzzle, the location of each tile, or in a robot world, the location of the robot and the (knowable) status of each square.

AgentState implementations should preferably be immutable; that is, they should be created through constructors, and thereafter accessed but not modified.

Version:
0.1

User: aaron Date: Sep 8, 2006 Time: 10:05:40 AM

Author:
aaron@cs