Structured, factored and atomic representation?

Question

I am currently reading "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach". Though the terminology factored, structured and atomic representation is confusing what do these mean exactly?

In relation to programming...

Thanks

Answer 1

Let me first explain to you about the agent because all the terms that you are asking are related to it. 

An agent is a thing that can be viewed as:

– perceiving its environment through sensors and

– acting upon that environment through actuators.

Agent’s organization

a) Atomic Representation: In this representation, each state of the world is a black box that has no internal structure. E.g., finding each state is a city. AI algorithms: search, games, Markov decision processes, hidden Markov models, etc.

b) Factored Representation: In this representation, each state has some attribute value properties. E.g., GPS location, amount of gas in the tank. AI algorithms: constraint satisfaction, and Bayesian networks.

c) Structured Representation: Relationships between the objects of a state can be explicitly expressed. AI algorithms: first-order logic, knowledge-based learning, natural language understanding.