A Systematic Approach to Reasoning about Actions and Change

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IRI-9501577 Chitta Baral University of Texas at El Paso $44,233 - 12 months CAREER: A Systematic Approach to Reasoning about Actions and Change This is the first year funding of a three-year CAREER grant. The proposed research is a step toward the systematic construction of intelligent agents that can reason and act in a changing world. These "cognitive robots" should be able, among other things, to (1) observe other objects changing their attributes and performing actions, and (2) use their observations and their knowledge to reason about the future and the past, to make or revise plans to achieve goals and execute the generated plans. The approach here is to develop (1) an action specification language that can express actual and hypothetical situations, concurrent actions, actions with complex effects, constraints, triggers, mapping between actual situation line and actual time line; (2) executable logic programs that embody the specifications; (3) interpreters for extension of the logic programs; and (4) the cognitive robots themselves. During the period of the grant, an educational plan will be developed that exposes students to the insights, perspectives, and tools of AI by (1) educating undergraduates about AI's basic methods and concepts and about AI's philosophical, social, and cognitive consequences, and (2) educating graduate students in other fields about the AI techniques and tools applicable to their fields. Intelligent robots, which have a great attraction to students and enable them to focus on some of the important topics of AI, will be used in some of the courses to be developed.