ECSEL Graduate Courses

Course type

Research Frontiers

Periodicity

Every year.

Prerequisites

Basic undergraduate courses in Logic. An introductory course in Artificial Intelligence is desirable but not required.

Contents

This course provides an introduction to formal knowledge representation in AI. More specifically, we consider the problem of reasoning about action and change and its formal characterization in logic. Conceptually, the course consists of three parts:

1. In part one, we consider knowledge representation in general and a methodology for constructing reasoners for computing inferences from a knowledge base.
2. In part two, we focus on a particular application domain, that of reasoning about action and change. We consider the historical development of the frame, qualification, and ramification problems which arise when reasoning about dynamical systems. We also introduce a number of approaches to temporal reasoning and introduce the notion of preferential entailment and its characterization in terms of circumscription. We conclude this part of the course with a number of case studies which propose solutions to the frame problems.
3. In part three, we question the methodological practice used in the case studies and consider a proposal by Sandewall, described in the book

   Features and Fluents: A Systematic Approach to the Representation of Knowledge about Dynamical Systems,
   Erik Sandewall,
   Oxford University Press, 1994.

   We introduce a systematic approach for studying the knowledge representation of dynamical systems. It is used for analyzing much of the work considered in part two of the course, and for constructing new logics of action and change which correct various anomalies in the case studies.

Literature

Features and Fluents: A Systematic Approach to the Representation of Knowledge about Dynamical Systems,
Erik Sandewall,
Oxford University Press, 1994.

Some useful Links

• The DLS algorithm is an algorithm for reducing second-order formulas to logically equivalent first-order formulas. You can test the experimental interactive implementation and try to reduce some of the circumscription axioms described in the course!
• The European Colloquium for Spatial and Temporal Reasoning (ECSTER) is organized by the Compulog SIG for Spatial and Temporal Reasoning and it's web page contains a plethora of useful information relating to spatial and temporal reasoning.
• The reasoning about actions link has been compiled by Rob Miller and contains links to a large number of researchers actively working in the area of reasoning about actions and time.

Further Information