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 Logic & Formal Reasoning


An Implementation of a Non-monotonic Logic in an Embedded Computer for a Motor-glider

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this article we present an implementation of non-monotonic reasoning in an embedded system. As a part of an autonomous motor-glider, it simulates piloting decisions of an airplane. A real pilot must take care not only about the information arising from the cockpit (airspeed, altitude, variometer, compass...) but also from outside the cabin. Throughout a flight, a pilot is constantly in communication with the control tower to follow orders, because there is an airspace regulation to respect. In addition, if the control tower sends orders while the pilot has an emergency, he may have to violate these orders and airspace regulations to solve his problem (e.g. emergency landing). On the other hand, climate changes constantly (wind, snow, hail...) and can affect the sensors. All these cases easily lead to contradictions. Switching to reasoning under uncertainty, a pilot must make decisions to carry out a flight. The objective of this implementation is to validate a non-monotonic model which allows to solve the question of incomplete and contradictory information. We formalize the problem using default logic, a non-monotonic logic which allows to find fixed-points in the face of contradictions. For the implementation, the Prolog language is used in an embedded computer running at 1 GHz single core with 512 Mb of RAM and 0.8 watts of energy consumption.


A Syntactic Operator for Forgetting that Satisfies Strong Persistence

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Whereas the operation of forgetting has recently seen a considerable amount of attention in the context of Answer Set Programming (ASP), most of it has focused on theoretical aspects, leaving the practical issues largely untouched. Recent studies include results about what sets of properties operators should satisfy, as well as the abstract characterization of several operators and their theoretical limits. However, no concrete operators have been investigated. In this paper, we address this issue by presenting the first concrete operator that satisfies strong persistence - a property that seems to best capture the essence of forgetting in the context of ASP - whenever this is possible, and many other important properties. The operator is syntactic, limiting the computation of the forgetting result to manipulating the rules in which the atoms to be forgotten occur, naturally yielding a forgetting result that is close to the original program. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.


Towards a Theory of Intentions for Human-Robot Collaboration

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The architecture described in this paper encodes a theory of intentions based on the the key principles of non-procrastination, persistence, and automatically limiting reasoning to relevant knowledge and observations. The architecture reasons with transition diagrams of any given domain at two different resolutions, with the fine-resolution description defined as a refinement of, and hence tightly-coupled to, a coarse-resolution description. Non-monotonic logical reasoning with the coarse-resolution description computes an activity (i.e., plan) comprising abstract actions for any given goal. Each abstract action is implemented as a sequence of concrete actions by automatically zooming to and reasoning with the part of the fine-resolution transition diagram relevant to the current coarse-resolution transition and the goal. Each concrete action in this sequence is executed using probabilistic models of the uncertainty in sensing and actuation, and the corresponding fine-resolution outcomes are used to infer coarse-resolution observations that are added to the coarse-resolution history. The architecture's capabilities are evaluated in the context of a simulated robot assisting humans in an office domain, on a physical robot (Baxter) manipulating tabletop objects, and on a wheeled robot (Turtlebot) moving objects to particular places or people. The experimental results indicate improvements in reliability and computational efficiency compared with an architecture that does not include the theory of intentions, and an architecture that does not include zooming for fine-resolution reasoning.


About epistemic negation and world views in Epistemic Logic Programs

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this paper we consider Epistemic Logic Programs, which extend Answer Set Programming (ASP) with "epistemic operators" and "epistemic negation", and a recent approach to the semantics of such programs in terms of World Views. We propose some observations on the existence and number of world views. We show how to exploit an extended ASP semantics in order to: (i) provide a characterization of world views, different from existing ones; (ii) query world views and query the whole set of world views.


Precomputing Datalog evaluation plans in large-scale scenarios

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this scenario, to reduce memory consumption and possibly optimize execution times, the paper proposes novel techniques to determine an optimal indexing schema for the underlying database together with suitable body-orderings for the Datalog rules. The new approach is compared with the standard execution plans implemented in DL V over widely used ontological benchmarks. The results confirm that the memory usage can be significantly reduced without paying any cost in efficiency. This paper is under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP). KEYWORDS: Datalog; Query Answering; Ontologies; Query-plan; Data Indexing 1 Introduction Ontological reasoning services represent fundamental features in the development of the Semantic Web. Among them, scientists are focusing their attention on the so-called ontology-based query answering (OBQA), where a Boolean query has to be evaluated against a logical theory (knowledge base) consisting of an extensional database paired with an ontology (Cal ฤฑ et al. 2009; Ortiz 2013; Amendola et al. 2018).


Extensional Higher-Order Paramodulation in Leo-III

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Leo-III is an automated theorem prover for extensional type theory with Henkin semantics and choice. Reasoning with primitive equality is enabled by adapting paramodulation-based proof search to higher-order logic. The prover may cooperate with multiple external specialist reasoning systems such as first-order provers and SMT solvers. Leo-III is compatible with the TPTP/TSTP framework for input formats, reporting results and proofs, and standardized communication between reasoning systems, enabling e.g. proof reconstruction from within proof assistants such as Isabelle/HOL. Leo-III supports reasoning in polymorphic first-order and higher-order logic, in all normal quantified modal logics, as well as in different deontic logics. Its development had initiated the ongoing extension of the TPTP infrastructure to reasoning within non-classical logics.


Revisiting Explicit Negation in Answer Set Programming

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

A common feature in Answer Set Programming is the use of a second negation, stronger than default negation and sometimes called explicit, strong or classical negation. This explicit negation is normally used in front of atoms, rather than allowing its use as a regular operator. In this paper we consider the arbitrary combination of explicit negation with nested expressions, as those defined by Lifschitz, Tang and Turner. We extend the concept of reduct for this new syntax and then prove that it can be captured by an extension of Equilibrium Logic with this second negation. We study some properties of this variant and compare to the already known combination of Equilibrium Logic with Nelson's strong negation. Under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.


Applying Constraint Logic Programming to SQL Semantic Analysis

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper proposes the use of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) to model SQL queries in a data-independent abstract layer by focusing on some semantic properties for signalling possible errors in such queries. First, we define a translation from SQL to Datalog, and from Datalog to CLP, so that solving this CLP program will give information about inconsistency, tautology, and possible simplifications. We use different constraint domains which are mapped to SQL types, and propose them to cooperate for improving accuracy. Our approach leverages a deductive system that includes SQL and Datalog, and we present an implementation in this system which is currently being tested in classroom, showing its advantages and differences with respect to other approaches, as well as some performance data. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in TPLP .


Learning higher-order logic programs

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

A key feature of inductive logic programming (ILP) is its ability to learn first-order programs, which are intrinsically more expressive than propositional programs. In this paper, we introduce techniques to learn higher-order programs. Specifically, we extend meta-interpretive learning (MIL) to support learning higher-order programs by allowing for \emph{higher-order definitions} to be used as background knowledge. Our theoretical results show that learning higher-order programs, rather than first-order programs, can reduce the textual complexity required to express programs which in turn reduces the size of the hypothesis space and sample complexity. We implement our idea in two new MIL systems: the Prolog system \namea{} and the ASP system \nameb{}. Both systems support learning higher-order programs and higher-order predicate invention, such as inventing functions for \tw{map/3} and conditions for \tw{filter/3}. We conduct experiments on four domains (robot strategies, chess playing, list transformations, and string decryption) that compare learning first-order and higher-order programs. Our experimental results support our theoretical claims and show that, compared to learning first-order programs, learning higher-order programs can significantly improve predictive accuracies and reduce learning times.


Logical reduction of metarules

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Many forms of inductive logic programming (ILP) use \emph{metarules}, second-order Horn clauses, to define the structure of learnable programs and thus the hypothesis space. Deciding which metarules to use for a given learning task is a major open problem and is a trade-off between efficiency and expressivity: the hypothesis space grows given more metarules, so we wish to use fewer metarules, but if we use too few metarules then we lose expressivity. In this paper, we study whether fragments of metarules can be logically reduced to minimal finite subsets. We consider two traditional forms of logical reduction: subsumption and entailment. We also consider a new reduction technique called \emph{derivation reduction}, which is based on SLD-resolution. We compute reduced sets of metarules for fragments relevant to ILP and theoretically show whether these reduced sets are reductions for more general infinite fragments. We experimentally compare learning with reduced sets of metarules on three domains: Michalski trains, string transformations, and game rules. In general, derivation reduced sets of metarules outperforms subsumption and entailment reduced sets, both in terms of predictive accuracies and learning times.