A Principled Approach to Reasoning about Discrete Dynamic Systems

离散动态系统推理的原则方法

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-05265
• 负责人: Soutchanski, Mikhail
• 金额: $ 1.75万
• 依托单位: Ryerson University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=679514
• 关键词: Principled; Approach; Reasoning; about; Discrete

Discrete dynamic phenomena are found in a broad range of contexts from discrete control in technical systems, to business processes, to atoms changing bonds in chemical reactions. Despite their diversity, these dynamic phenomena, usually conceptualized in terms of discrete events or actions, can be described using common underlying principles. These principles should be formally represented in a mathematical language that facilitates their analysis. This helps to design general solutions that can be subsequently deployed in a variety of applications. The proposed research program contributes to developing general principled representations for actions and their effects, and to demonstrating how these representations can be used to perform computationally tractable reasoning about the direct and indirect effects of actions. There are several conceptual and computational challenges that prevent the existing principled representations and reasoning mechanisms from making practical contributions to solving real-world problems. The objective of the proposed research program is to address some of these challenges. They include identifying the kinds of discrete dynamical systems that frequently occur in practical applications and investigating the use of principled logical representations to model these systems. The proposed research will focus on application of first order logic techniques to solve large scale planning problems. In particular, there is a need to explore how lifted first order logic representations can be used to solve deterministic planning problems when initial knowledge is incomplete. The proposed research will concentrate on the cases where computationally tractable solutions can be developed. Also, it will be explored how can we deal efficiently with actions that have indirect effects. Often, these effects are specified using causal rules; yet, there is little known about a boundary separating the case when reasoning about indirect effects is computationally tractable from the case when it is not. Moreover, the question how lifted first order planning can be done when actions have indirect effects has not yet been explored. The outcome of this research will be advancement of our knowledge and the development of techniques with broad applicability.

离散动态现象存在于广泛的环境中，从技术系统中的离散控制到业务流程，再到化学反应中原子改变键。尽管它们具有多样性，但这些动态现象通常以离散事件或动作来概念化，可以使用共同的基本原理来描述。这些原理应该用数学语言来正式表示，以便于分析。这有助于设计随后可以部署在各种应用程序中的通用解决方案。拟议的研究计划有助于开发行动及其影响的一般原则表示，并展示如何使用这些表示来对行动的直接和间接影响进行计算上易于处理的推理。有一些概念和计算方面的挑战阻碍了现有的原则表示和推理机制为解决现实世界问题做出实际贡献。拟议研究计划的目标是解决其中一些挑战。它们包括识别实际应用中经常出现的离散动力系统的类型，并研究使用原则逻辑表示来对这些系统进行建模。拟议的研究将侧重于应用一阶逻辑技术来解决大规模规划问题。特别是，需要探索当初始知识不完整时如何使用提升的一阶逻辑表示来解决确定性规划问题。拟议的研究将集中于可以开发计算上易于处理的解决方案的情况。此外，我们还将探讨如何有效地处理具有间接影响的行为。通常，这些影响是使用因果规则来指定的；然而，对于间接效应的推理在计算上易于处理的情况与不可处理的情况之间的界限，人们知之甚少。此外，当行动产生间接影响时如何提升一阶规划的问题尚未得到探讨。这项研究的成果将是我们知识的进步和具有广泛适用性的技术的开发。