Task Environments and Their Properties

Task environments describe the setting and conditions under which an agent operates.
They can be categorized by several properties:

• Fully vs. Partially Observable
• Deterministic vs. Stochastic
• Episodic vs. Sequential
• Static vs. Dynamic
• Discrete vs. Continuous
• Single Agent vs. Multi-Agent

For example:

• Chess: Deterministic, sequential, discrete, fully observable.
• Autonomous Taxi: Stochastic, dynamic, continuous, partially observable.

Understanding these characteristics helps engineers select the best algorithms for decision-making and learning.