Procedural knowledge

Abstract

Much of commonsense knowledge about the real world is in the form of procedures or sequences of actions for achieving particular goals. In this paper, a formalism is presented for representing such knowledge using the notion of process. A declarative semantics for the representation is given, which allows a user to state facts about the effects of doing things in the problem domain of interest. An operational semantics is also provided, which shows how this knowledge can be used to achieve particular goals or to form intentions regarding their achievement. Given both semantics, our formalism additionally serves as an executable specification language suitable for constructing complex systems. A system based on this formalism is described, and examples involving control of an autonomous robot and fault diagnosis for NASA's space shuttle are provided.