Flexible planning using fuzzy description logics: Theory and application

Description logics (DLs for short) are formalisms for representing knowledge of various domains in a structured and formally well-understood way. Typically, DLs are limited to deal with precise and welldefined concepts. In this paper we first present a fuzzy extension of ALC*, called fuzzy ALC*, combining Zadeh’s fuzzy logic with an expressive DL and define its syntax and semantics. Then we devote to taking advantage of the expressive power and reasoning capabilities of fuzzy ALC* by encoding flexible planning problems within the framework of fuzzy ALC*. Both theory and experimental results have shown that our method is sound and efficient. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.