A drawback which concept languages based on kl-one have is that all the terminological knowledge has to be defined on an abstract logical level. In many applications, one would like to be able to refer to concrete domains and predicates on these domains when defining concepts. Examples for such concrete domains are the integers, the real numbers, or also non-arithmetic domains, and predicates could be equality, inequality, or more complex predicates. In the present paper we shall propose a scheme for integrating such concrete domains into concept languages rather than describing a particular extension by some specific concrete domain. We shall define a terminological and an assertional language, and consider the important inference problems such as subsumption, instantiation, and consistency. The formal semantics as well as the reasoning algorithms are given on the scheme level. In contrast to existing kl-one based systems, these algorithms will be not only sound but also complete. The...

This paper surveys various complexity results on different forms of logic programming. The main focus is on decidable forms of logic programming, in particular, propositional logic programming and datalog, but we also mention general logic programming with function symbols. Next to classical results on plain logic programming (pure Horn clause programs), more recent results on various important extensions of logic programming are surveyed. These include logic programming with different forms of negation, disjunctive logic programming, logic programming with equality, and constraint logic programming. The complexity of the unification problem is also addressed.

We consider a language for reasoning about probability which allows us to make statements such as “the probability of E, is less than f ” and “the probability of E, is at least twice the probability of E,, ” where E, and EZ are arbitrary events. We consider the case where all events are measurable (i.e., represent measurable sets) and the more general case, which is also of interest in practice, where they may not be measurable. The measurable case is essentially a formalization of (the proposi-tional fragment of) Nilsson’s probabilistic logic. As we show elsewhere, the general (nonmeasurable) case corresponds precisely to replacing probability measures by Dempster-Shafer belief functions. In both cases, we provide a complete axiomatiza-tion and show that the problem of deciding satistiability is NP-complete, no worse than that of propositional logic. As a tool for proving our complete axiomatiza-tions, we give a complete axiomatization for reasoning about Boolean combina-tions of linear inequalities, which is of independent interest. This proof and others make crucial use of results from the theory of linear programming. We then extend the language to allow reasoning about conditional probability and show that the resulting logic is decidable and completely axiomatizable, by making use of the theory of real closed fields. ( 1990 Academic Press. Inc 1.

In this paper, a new algorithm for performing quantifier elimination from first order formulas over real closed fields is given. This algorithm improves the complexity of the asymptotically fastest algorithm for this problem, known to this date. A new feature of this algorithm is that the role of the algebraic part (the dependence on the degrees of the input polynomials) and the combinatorial part (the dependence on the number of polynomials) are separated. Another new feature is that the degrees of the polynomials in the equivalent quantifier-free formula that is output, are independent of the number of input polynomials. As special cases of this algorithm, new and improved algorithms for deciding a sentence in the first order theory over real closed fields, and also for solving the existential problem in the first order theory over real closed fields, are obtained.

Introduction Many science and engineering applications require the user to find solutions to systems of nonlinear constraints over real numbers or to optimize a nonlinear function subject to nonlinear constraints. This includes applications such the modeling of chemical engineering processes and of electrical circuits, robot kinematics, chemical equilibrium problems, and design problems (e.g., nuclear reactor design). The field of global optimization is the study of methods to find all solutions to systems of nonlinear constraints and all global optima to optimization problems. Nonlinear problems raise many issues from a computation standpoint. On the one hand, deciding if a set of polynomial constraints has a solution is NP-hard. In fact, Canny [ Canny, 1988 ] and Renegar [ Renegar, 1988 ] have shown that the problem is in PSPACE and it is not known whether the problem lies in NP. Nonlinear programming problems can be so hard that some methods are designed only to solve probl

Introduction A natural and well-studied problem in algorithmic graph theory and network optimization is that of computing a "shortest path" between two nodes, s and t, in a graph whose edges have "weights" associated with them, and we consider the "length" of a path to be the sum of the weights of the edges that comprise it. Efficient algorithms are well known for this problem, as briefly summarized below. The shortest path problem takes on a new dimension when considered in a geometric domain. In contrast to graphs, where the encoding of edges is explicit, a geometric instance of a shortest path problem is usually specified by giving geometric objects that implicitly encode the graph and its edge weights. Our goal in devising efficient geometric algorithms is generally to avoid explicit construction of the entire underlying graph, since the full induced graph may be very large (even exponential in the input size, or infinite). Computing an optimal

Exact computer arithmetic has a variety of uses including, but not limited to, the robust implementation of geometric algorithms. This report has three purposes. The first is to offer fast software-level algorithms for exact addition and multiplication of arbitrary precision floating-point values. The second is to propose a technique for adaptive-precision arithmetic that can often speed these algorithms when one wishes to perform multiprecision calculations that do not always require exact arithmetic, but must satisfy some error bound. The third is to provide a practical demonstration of these techniques, in the form of implementations of several common geometric calculations whose required degree of accuracy depends on their inputs. These robust geometric predicates are adaptive; their running time depends on the degree of uncertainty of the result, and is usually small. These algorithms work on computers whose floating-point arithmetic uses radix two and exact rounding, including machines complying with the IEEE 754 standard. The inputs to the predicates may be arbitrary single or double precision floating-point numbers. C code is publicly available for the 2D and 3D orientation and incircle tests, and robust Delaunay triangulation using these tests. Timings of the implementations demonstrate their effectiveness. Supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under a 1967 Science and Engineering Scholarship and by the National Science Foundation under Grant CMS-9318163. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either express or implied, of NSERC, NSF, or the U.S. Government. Keywords: arbitrary precision floating-point arit...

We review the current state of the art of methods for numerical computation of Nash equilibria for finite n-person games. Classical path following methods, such as the Lemke-Howson algorithm for two person games, and Scarf-type fixed point algorithms for n-person games provide globally convergent methods for finding a sample equilibrium. For large problems, methods which are not globally convergent, such as sequential linear complementarity methods may be preferred on the grounds of speed. None of these methods are capable of characterizing the entire set of Nash equilibria. More computationally intensive methods, which derive from the theory of semi-algebraic sets are required for finding all equilibria. These methods can also be applied to compute various equilibrium refinements.

This paper presents a randomized motion planner for kinodynamic asteroid avoidanceproblems, in which a robot must avoid collision with moving obstacles under kinematic, dynamic constraints and reach a specified goal state. Inspired by probabilistic-roadmap (PRM) techniques, the planner samples the state\Thetatime space of a robot by picking control inputs at random in order to compute a roadmap that captures the connectivity of the space. However, the planner does not precompute a roadmap as most PRM planners do. Instead, for each planning query, it generates, on the fly, a small roadmap that connects the given initial and goal state. In contrast to PRM planners, the roadmapcomputed by our algorithm is a directed graph oriented along the time axis of the space. To verify the planner's effectiveness in practice, we tested it both in simulated environments containing many moving obstacles and on a real robot under strict dynamic constraints. The efficiency of the planner makes it possibl...

We consider the model checking problem for probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA) and properties expressible in various probabilistic logics. We start with properties that can be formulated as instances of a generalized random walk problem. We prove that both qualitative and quantitative model checking for this class of properties and pPDA is decidable. Then we show that model checking for the qualitative fragment of the logic PCTL and pPDA is also decidable. Moreover, we develop an error-tolerant model checking algorithm for general PCTL and the subclass of stateless pPDA. Finally, we consider the class of properties definable by deterministic B uchi automata, and show that both qualitative and quantitative model checking for pPDA is decidable. 1.