that come from object-oriented programming have direct representation in F-logic; other, secondary aspects of this paradigm are easily modeled as well. The paper also discusses semantic issues pertaining to programming with a deductive object-oriented language based on a subset of F-logic.

Model checking is emerging as a practical tool for automated debugging of complex reactive systems such as embedded controllers and network protocols (see [23] for a survey). Traditional techniques for model checking do not admit an explicit modeling of time, and are thus, unsuitable for analysis

the administrative and technical knowledge to create information needed for decision-making. Software which mediates is common today, but the structure, the interfaces, and implementations vary greatly, so that automation of integration is awkward. By formalizing and implementing mediation we establish a partitioned

be taken as given: Truthvalues This is the set T = ftt; ffg and is ranged over by (the metavariable) t (and we also happily employ for this (and any other) metavariable sub- and super-scripts to generate other metavariables: t ; t 0 ; t 1k ).

reflect similarity structure and relations of temporal contiguity. The other is “rule based” because it operates on symbolic structures that have logical content and variables and because its computations have the properties that are normally assigned to rules. The systems serve complementary functions

, functions, and other objects — is called an ontology. This paper describes a mechanism for defining ontologies that are portable over representation systems. Definitions written in a standard format for predicate calculus are translated by a system called Ontolingua into specialized representations

This book presents a unified treatment of many different kinds of planning algorithms. The subject lies at the crossroads between robotics, control theory, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and computer graphics. The particular subjects covered include motion planning, discrete planning

in terms of intentional dependency relationships among agents. Agents depend on each other for goals to be achieved, tasks to be performed, and resources to be furnished. Agents are intentional in that they have desires and wants, and strategic in that they are concerned about opportunities

, and demonstrate that most of the steps are polynomial, typically bounded by O (N 2 ). Next we demonstrate some examples of its operation taken from our cognitive simulation studies and work in machine learning. Finally, we compare SME to other analogy programs and discuss several areas for future work. This paper

Requirements analysis includes a preliminary acquisition step where a global model for the specification of the system and its environment is elaborated. This model, called requirements model, involves concepts that are currently not supported by existing formal specification languages, such as goals to be achieved, agents to be assigned, alternatives to be negotiated, etc. The paper presents an approach to requirements acquisition which is driven by such higher-level concepts. Requirements models are acquired as instances of a conceptual meta-model. The latter can be represented as a graph where each node captures an abstraction such as, e.g., goal, action, agent, entity, or event, and where the edges capture semantic links between such abstractions. Well-formedness properties on nodes and links constrain their instances - that is, elements of requirements models. Requirements acquisition processes then correspond to particular ways of traversing the meta-model graph to acquire approp...