Qualitative Reasoning about Continuous Processes with the Situation Calculus

Hybrid Systems and AI: Modeling Analysis and Control of Discrete Plus Continuous Systems

Volume

Papers from the 1999 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

A fundamental aspect of general reasoning about physical systems is qualitative reasoning about continuous processes. The situation calculus is proposed as a framework for qualitative reasoning with some desirable properties that are less evident in the traditional framework, qualitative physics. However, in order to handle qualitative reasoning about continuous properties, we extend the concurrent, temporal situation calculus to include function variables. We show how parameters that are functions of time are specified by successor state axioms in terms of pieces of other functions of time. Finally, we present a qualitative bouncing ball example.