But Findlay's remark, like so much that has been written on the subject of time in the present century, was provoked in the first place by McTaggart's ...

Modal propositional logic; Modal predicate logic; A survey of modal logic.

High-level robot controllers often need to specify event-driven behavior and they operate low-level processes which change the world in a continuous fashion. While non logic-based control languages have existed for some time to address these issues, this is not the case for logic-based languages. To remedy the situation, we show how to incorporate continuous change and event-driven behavior into the action language GOLOG. Besides proposing a suitable semantics for the new language, which we call cc-Golog, we show how a robot (...) architecture where a high-level controller communicates via messages with low-level routines can be modeled naturally in this new dialect. Finally, we demonstrate how on-line execution and off-line projection can be combined in this language. (shrink)

In this work we propose an encoding of Reiter’s Situation Calculus solution to the frame problem into the framework of a simple multimodal logic of actions. In particular we present the modal counterpart of the regression technique. This gives us a theorem proving method for a relevant fragment of our modal logic.

We propose a translation into Modal Logic of the ideas that formalise belief change in the Situation Calculus. This translation is extended to the case of revision. In the conclusion is presented a set of open issues.

This volume is a collection of original contributions about the core knowledge in fundamental domains. It includes work on naive physics, such as formal specifications of intuitive theories of spatial relations, time causality, substance and physical objects, and on naive psychology.

Specifying and implementing dynamical systems with the situation calculus.

This book describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The idea of knowledge bases lies at the heart of symbolic, or "traditional," artificial intelligence. A knowledge-based system decides how to act by running formal reasoning procedures over a body of explicitly represented knowledge—a knowledge base. The system is not programmed for specific tasks; rather, it is (...) told what it needs to know and expected to infer the rest. This book is about the logic of such knowledge bases. It describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Assuming some familiarity with first-order predicate logic, the book offers a new mathematical model of knowledge that is general and expressive yet more workable in practice than previous models. The book presents a style of semantic argument and formal analysis that would be cumbersome or completely impractical with other approaches. It also shows how to treat a knowledge base as an abstract data type, completely specified in an abstract way by the knowledge-level operations defined over it. (shrink)

In 1969, John McCarthy and Pat Hayes uncovered a problem that has haunted the field of artificial intelligence ever since--the frame problem. The problem arises when logic is used to describe the effects of actions and events. Put simply, it is the problem of representing what remains unchanged as a result of an action or event. Many researchers in artificial intelligence believe that its solution is vital to the realization of the field's goals. Solving the Frame Problem presents the various (...) approaches to the frame problem that have been proposed over the years. The author presents the material chronologically--as an unfolding story rather than as a body of theory to be learned by rote. There are lessons to be learned even from the dead ends researchers have pursued, for they deepen our understanding of the issues surrounding the frame problem. In the book's concluding chapters, the author offers his own work on event calculus, which he claims comes very close to a complete solution to the frame problem. Artificial Intelligence series. (shrink)

Reasoning About Knowledge is the first book to provide a general discussion of approaches to reasoning about knowledge and its applications to distributed ...