By using an example from a robot navigating domain, we argue that to specify declaratively the behavior of an agent, we need to have a formal and explicit notion of \quality plans." To that end, we propose the following three domain independent measures of plan quality: a plan is said to be A-minimalif none of the actions in it can be deleted and have it continue to be a plan; it is said to be ...

We present a declarative formalization of STRIPS [1] as a reasoning strategy in the situation calculus [10]. The idea is to use logic not only to represent planning problems, but also to describe the mental situations, mental actions and reasoning strategy STRIPS uses to solve those problems.

In this paper we study the diierences between two logic theories for temporal reasoning, the Situation Calculus and the Event Calculus, and the implications of these diierences. We construct a new formalism that combines the advantages of both Situation and Event Calculus and avoids the problems of either. The new formalism is useful for general temporal reasoning in worlds with discrete and co...

This paper describes a clinical situation where it was impossible to obtain a biopsy of a lesion at the anterior commissure in a patient with progressive hoarseness of voice using standard microlaryngoscopy techniques. Due to anatomical difficulties and a histological suggestion of laryngeal papillomatosis the incisor teeth were deliberately removed to allow an adequate view of the larynx and t...

Background: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) is the most practiced procedure in general surgery worldwide. It nowadays optimum surgical for symptomatic gallbladder lithiasis. Nevertheless, it should not be underestimated since vascular and biliary duct injuries are uncommon, with devastating consequences. This study aimed to advise best technical approach LC according intraoperative situation ...

In many tasks related to reasoning about consequences of a logical theory, it is desirable to decompose the theory into a number of components with weakly-related or independent signatures. This facilitates reasoning when the signature of a query formula belongs to only one of the components. However, an initial theory may be subject to change due to execution of actions affecting features ment...

In this paper we consider updates that are specified as rules and consider simple knowledge bases consisting of ground atoms. We present a translation of the rule based update specifications to extended logic programs using situation calculus notation so as to compute the updated knowledge base. We show that the updated knowledge base that we compute satisfies the update specifications and yet ...

Location estimation is a fundamental sensing task in robotic applications, where the world is uncertain, and sensors and effectors are noisy. Most systems make various assumptions about the dependencies between state variables, and especially about how these dependencies change as a result of actions. Building on a general framework by Bacchus, Halpern and Levesque for reasoning about degrees o...

We propose a model of belief and intention change over the course of a dialogue, in the case where the decisions taken during the dialogue affect the possibly conflicting goals of the agents involved. We use Situation Calculus to model the evolution of the world and an observation model to analyze the evolution of intentions and beliefs. In our formalization, utterances, that only change the be...

The situation calculus (SC) is a formalism for reasoning about action. Within SC, the notion of state of a given situation is usually characterized by the set of uents that hold in that situation. However, this concept is insuucient for system speciication. To overcome this limitation, an extension of SC is proposed, the situation and state calculus (SSC), where the concept of state is primitiv...