Nausicaa and the Sirens: A tale of two intelligent autonomous agents

Nausicaa and the Sirens, mythological characters from Homer´s Odyssey, have totally different characters. Nausicaa, an intelligent and modest princess, helps Odysseus on his journey to Alcinolis´s city. The Sirens, however, are sea creatures who use their beautiful voices to lure mariners onto the rocks surrounding their island. These characters gave me inspiration on how to design and deploy agents for real-world tasks. Before explaining how these characters from the Odyssey relate to intelligent agents, the author discusses what forms the essence of an intelligent agent. Intelligent and autonomous systems are essential in assisting human activities in complex situations. I define an intelligent agent as a self-contained system that undertakes context-sensitive decision making and task enforcement in an open (or semi-open) environment. Agent systems should behave reasonably in a broad range of situations, a feature that distinguishes agent systems from conventional software systems