What Sensing Tells Us: Towards A Formal Theory of Testing for Dynamical Systems

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2000

Abstract

Just as actions can have indirect effects on the state of the world, so too can sensing actions have indirect effects on an agent's state of knowledge. In this paper, we investigate “what sensing actions tell us”, i.e., what an agent comes to know indirectly from the outcome of a sensing action, given knowledge of its actions and state constraints that hold in the world. To this end, we propose a formalization of the notion of testing within a dialect of the situation calculus that includes knowledge and sensing actions. Realizing this formalization requires addressing the ramification problem for sensing actions. We formalize simple tests as sensing actions. Complex tests are expressed in the logic programming language Golog. We examine what it means to perform a test, and how the outcome of a test affects an agent's state of knowledge. Finally, we propose automated reasoning techniques for test generation and complex-test verification, under certain restrictions. The work presented in this paper is relevant to a number of application domains including diagnostic problem solving, natural language understanding, plan recognition, and active vision.

Identifier

0013406370 (Scopus)

ISBN

[0262511126, 9780262511124]

Publication Title

Proceedings of the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and 12th Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Aaai 2000

First Page

483

Last Page

490

Grant

9819116

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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