Abstract
In the Situation Calculus the term do(a, s) denotes the successor situation to s, resulting from performing (i.e. executing) the action a. In other words, it is assumed that actions always succeed. If action a is not possible in situation s, then the action still succeeds but the resulting situation is not physically realizable. We will argue that consequences of this definition of do(a, s) puts some limitations on applicability of the Situation Calculus. In this paper, we view do(a, s) slightly differently which results in a more general form for successor state axioms. The new framework not only has all the benefits of the current version of the Situation Calculus but also offers several advantages. We suggest that it is more intuitive than the traditional account. As well, it leads to a more general solution to the projection problem. Last, it leads to a more general formalization of knowledge in the Situation Calculus.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The discussion and proof will be given in the full paper.
- 2.
A formal account of the problem will be given in the full paper.
- 3.
The complete description will be given in the full paper.
References
Levesque, H., Pirri, F., Reiter, R.: Foundations for the situation calculus. Electron. Trans. Artif. Intell. 2(3–4), 159–178 (1998)
McCarthy, J.: Situations, actions and causal laws. Technical report, Stanford University (1963)
Reiter, R.: The frame problem in the situation calculus: a simple solution (sometimes) and a completeness result for goal regression. In: Artificial Intelligence and Mathematical Theory of Computation: Papers in Honor of John McCarthy (1991)
Reiter, R.: Knowledge in Action: Logical Foundations for Specifying and Implementing Dynamical Systems. MIT Press, Cambridge (2001)
Scherl, R.B., Levesque, H.J.: Knowledge, action, and the frame problem. Artif. Intell. 144(1), 1–39 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vaezian, V., Delgrande, J.P. (2017). On the Role of Possibility in Action Execution and Knowledge in the Situation Calculus. In: Mouhoub, M., Langlais, P. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Canadian AI 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10233. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57351-9_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57351-9_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57350-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57351-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)