A Framework for Autonomous Agents Based on the Concept of Anticipatory Systems

This paper presents a new framework for autonomous agents that is based on the concept of anticipatory systems. It is a hybrid approach that synthesizes low-level reactive behavior and high-level symbolic reasoning. According to this framework, an agent, i.e. an anticipatory agent, consists of three main entities: a reactive system, a world model, and a meta-level component. The world model should, in addition to the description of the agent's environment, also include a description of the reactive part of the agent. The basic idea is that the meta-level component makes use of the world model to make predictions of future states. These predictions are then used by the meta-level to guide the agent's behavior on a high-level, whereas the low-level behavior is controlled by the reactive component.