A theory of action, knowledge and time in the event calculus

Abstract

To regulate and coordinate the behavior of agents within real-world environments, the participating entities must be able to reason not only about the state of the environment itself, but also about their own knowledge concerning that state, based on information acquired through sensing actions. Considering the dynamic nature of most realistic domains, the study of knowledge evolution over time is a critical aspect. This paper develops a formal account of action, knowledge and time within the context of the Event Calculus and proposes a unified theory that is applicable to diverse scenarios of commonsense reasoning. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.