Artificial Intelligence - Terminology

Here is the list of frequently used terms in the domain of AI:

Term	Meaning
Agent	Agents are systems or software programs capable of autonomous, purposeful and reasoning directed towards one or more goals. They are also called assistants, brokers, bots, droids, intelligent agents, and software agents.
Autonomous Robot	Robot free from external control or influence and able to control itself independently.
Backward Chaining	Strategy of working backward for Reason/Cause of a problem.
Blackboard	It is the memory inside computer, which is used for communication between the cooperating expert systems.
Environment	It is the part of real or computational world inhabited by the agent.
Forward Chaining	Strategy of working forward for conclusion/solution of a problem.
Heuristics	It is the knowledge based on Trial-and-error, evaluations, and experimentation.
Knowledge Engineering	Acquiring knowledge from human experts and other resources.
Percepts	It is the format in which the agent obtains information about the environment.
Pruning	Overriding unnecessary and irrelevant considerations in AI systems.
Rule	It is a format of representing knowledge base in Expert System. It is in the form of IF-THEN-ELSE.
Shell	A shell is a software that helps in designing inference engine, knowledge base, and user interface of an expert system.
Task	It is the goal the agent is tries to accomplish.
Turing Test	A test developed by Allan Turing to test the intelligence of a machine as compared to human intelligence.