Reasoning about Discontinuities in the Event Calculus
May 1996
Abstract
This paper describes a logic-based
formalism which combines techniques for reasoning about actions
with standard mathematical techniques for modelling dynamic systems
using the differential calculus. The formalism inherits a robust solution to
the frame problem which can handle concurrency, non-determinism,
domain constraints and narrative. It also incorporates a mechanism
for reasoning about the boundary conditions associated with systems
of differential equations defined over various intervals. This
mechanism overcomes a number of drawbacks of previous systems.
This paper is available over the Web
in postscript form:
CEC.ps, or as a dvi file:
CEC.dvi.
The paper also appears in the proceedings of
The 5th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning (KR'96), but without Appendix B (the example
derivation).
This research was sponsored by the
EPSRC,
under a research project entitled
Logic for Commonsense Reasoning about Continuous Change.