A Description Logic for Composite Objects for Domain Modeling in an Agent-Oriented Application

Papers Submitted to the Workshop

In this paper we present a description logic for composite objects and show its use for domain modeling in a particular application. The description logic extends standard description logics by providing support for representation of and reasoning about part-of. We have extended the standard reasoning tasks of subsumption, classification and recognition to include knowledge about part-of. Further, we maintain a part-of hierarchy for individuals that can be used for querying the system about composite objects. We provide the system with new user functions to allow for traversing the part-of hierarchy as well. Our extended description logic system retains the well-known advantages of description logic systems while extending their representational and inferential capabilities.