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Abstract

Background and focus The standard situation calculus assumes that atomic actions are deterministic. But many domains involve nondeterministic actions. The key point when dealing with nondeterministic actions is that we need to clearly distinguish between choices that can be made by the agent and choices that are made by the environment, i.e., angelic vs. devilish nondeterminism. “Nondeterministic Situation Calculus” is an extension to the standard situation calculus that accommodates nondeterministic actions and preserves Reiter’s solution to the frame problem. It allows for answering projection queries through regression. But it also provides the means to formalize, e.g., (first-order) planning in nondeterministic domains and to define execution of ConGolog high-level program in nondeterministic domains.

Having taken the Foundation of Self-Programming and Computer-Aided Formal Verification is not required but will be of help. Research topic/question and expected contribution Under suitable assumptions (e.g., propositional or finite-object cases), devise and implement reasoning about action and strategic reasoning techniques for nondeterministic situation calculus based on formal methods methodologies

Method Reasoning about Actions, Planning, Model Checking, reactive synthesis

Existing work and references Giuseppe De Giacomo, Yves Lespérance: The Nondeterministic Situation Calculus. KR 2021: 216-226

Ray Reiter: Knowledge in Action: Logical Foundations for Specifying and Implementing Dynamical Systems, MIT Press 2001

Giuseppe De Giacomo, Yves Lespérance, Hector J. Levesque: ConGolog, a concurrent programming language based on the situation calculus. Artif. Intell. 121(1-2): 109-169 (2000)

Giuseppe De Giacomo, Yves Lespérance, Fabio Patrizi: Bounded situation calculus action theories. Artif. Intell. 237: 172-203 (2016)