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Vorgestellt wird ein System basierend auf einem 3D-Scanner nach dem Licht- schnitt-Prinzip mit dem es möglich ist, einen Menschen innerhalb von 1,5 Sekun- den dreidimensional zu erfassen. Mit Hilfe von Evolutionären Algorithmen wird über eine modellbasierte Dateninterpretation die Auswertung der Meßdaten betrie- ben, so daß beliebige Körpermaße ermittelt werden können. Das Ergebnis ist ein individualisiertes CAD-Modells der Person im Rechner. Ein derartiges Modell kann als virtuelle Kleiderpuppe zur Produktion von Maßbekleidung dienen.
Contrary to symbolic learning approaches, which represent a learned concept explicitly, case-based approaches describe concepts implicitly by a pair (CB; sim), i.e. by a measure of similarity sim and a set CB of cases. This poses the question if there are any differences concerning the learning power of the two approaches. In this article we will study the relationship between the case base, the measure of similarity, and the target concept of the learning process. To do so, we transform a simple symbolic learning algorithm (the version space algorithm) into an equivalent case- based variant. The achieved results strengthen the hypothesis of the equivalence of the learning power of symbolic and case-based methods and show the interdependency between the measure used by a case-based algorithm and the target concept.
Retrieving multiple cases is supposed to be an adequate retrieval strategy for guiding partial-order planners because of the recognized flexibility of these planners to interleave steps in the plans. Cases are combined by merging them. In this paper, we will examine two different kinds of merging cases in the context of partial-order planning. We will see that merging cases can be very difficult if the cases are merged eagerly. On the other hand, if cases are merged by avoiding redundant steps, the guidance of the additional cases tends to decrease with the number of covered goals and retrieved cases in domains having a certain kind of interactions. Thus, to retrieve a single case covering many of the goals of the problem or to retrieve fewer cases covering many of the goals is at least equally effective as to retrieve several cases covering all goals in these domains.
A Case Study on Specifikation,Detection and Resolution of IN Feature Interactions with Estelle
(1994)
We present an approach for the treatment of Feature Interactions in Intelligent Networks. The approach is based on the formal description technique Estelle and consists of three steps. For the first step, a specification style supporting the integration of additional features into a basic service is introduced . As a result, feature integration is achieved by adding specification text, i.e . on a purely syntactical level. The second step is the detection of feature interactions resulting from the integration of additional features. A formal criterion is given that can be used for the automatic detection of a particular class of feature interactions. In the third step, previously detected feature interactions are resolved. An algorithm has been devised that allows the automatical incorporation of high-level design decisions into the formal specification. The presented approach is applied to the Basic Call Service and several supplementary interacting features.
A large set of criteria to evaluate formal methods for reactive systems is presented. To make this set more comprehensible, it is structured according to a Concept-Model of formal methods. It is made clear that it is necessary to make the catalogue more specific before applying it. Some of the steps needed to do so are explained. As an example the catalogue is applied within the context of the application domain building automation systems to three different formal methods: SDL, statecharts, and a temporallogic.
A new approach for modelling time that does not rely on the concept of a clock is proposed. In order to establish a notion of time, system behaviour is represented as a joint progression of multiple threads of control, which satisfies a certain set of axioms. We show that the clock-independent time model is related to the well-known concept of a global clock and argue that both approaches establish the same notion of time.
Coloring terms (rippling) is a technique developed for inductive theorem proving which uses syntactic differences of terms to guide the proof search. Annotations (colors) to terms are used to maintain this information. This technique has several advantages, e.g. it is highly goal oriented and involves little search. In this paper we give a general formalization of coloring terms in a higher-order setting. We introduce a simply-typed lambda calculus with color annotations and present an appropriate (pre-)unification algorithm. Our work is a formal basis to the implementation of rippling in a higher-order setting which is required e.g. in case of middle-out reasoning. Another application is in the construction of natural language semantics, where the color annotations rule out linguistically invalid readings that are possible using standard higher-order unification.
This paper develops a sound and complete transformation-based algorithm forunification in an extensional order-sorted combinatory logic supporting constantoverloading and a higher-order sort concept. Appropriate notions of order-sortedweak equality and extensionality - reflecting order-sorted fij-equality in thecorresponding lambda calculus given by Johann and Kohlhase - are defined, andthe typed combinator-based higher-order unification techniques of Dougherty aremodified to accommodate unification with respect to the theory they generate. Thealgorithm presented here can thus be viewed as a combinatory logic counterpartto that of Johann and Kohlhase, as well as a refinement of that of Dougherty, andprovides evidence that combinatory logic is well-suited to serve as a framework forincorporating order-sorted higher-order reasoning into deduction systems aimingto capitalize on both the expressiveness of extensional higher-order logic and theefficiency of order-sorted calculi.
This paper describes a system that supports softwaredevelopment processes in virtual software corporations. A virtual software corporation consists of a set of enterprisesthat cooperate in projects to fulfill customer needs. Contracts are negotiated in the whole lifecycle of asoftware development project. The negotiations really influence the performance of a company. Therefore, it isuseful to support negotiations and planning decisions with software agents. Our approach integrates software agentapproaches for negotiation support with flexible multiserver workflow engines.
The concept of the Virtual Software Corporation ( VSC) has recently become a practical reality as a result of advances in communication and distributed technologies. However, there are significant difficulties with the management of the software development process within a VSC. The main problem is the significantly increased communicational complexity of the process model for such developments. The more classic managerial hierarchy is generally replaced by a "flatter" network of commitments. Therefore new solution approaches are required to provide the necessary process support. The purpose of this paper is to present a solution approach which models the process based on deontic logic. The approach has been validated against a case study where it was used to model commitments and inter-human communications within the software development process of a VSC. The use of the formalism is exemplified through a prototype system using a layered multi-agent architecture.
This paper investigates the suitability of the mobile agents approach to the problem of integrating a collection of local DBMS into a single heterogeneous large-scale distributed DBMS. The paper proposes a model of distributed transactions as a set of mobile agents and presents the relevant execution semantics. In addition, the mechanisms which are needed to guarantee the ACID properties in the considered environment are discussed.
Information technology support for complex, dynamic, and distributed business processes as they occur in engineering domains requires an advanced process management system which enhances currently available workflow management services with respect to integration, flexibility, and adapt ation. We present an uniform and flexible framework for advanced process management on an a bstract level which uses and adapts agent technology from distributed artificial intelligence for both modelling and enacting of processes. We identify two different frameworks for applying agent tec hnology to process management: First, as a multi-agent system with the domain of process manag ement. Second, as a key infrastructure technology for building a process management system. We will then follow the latter approach and introduce different agent types for managing activities, products, and resources which capture specific views on the process.
This paper describes the architecture and concept of operation of a Framework for Adaptive Process Modeling and Execution (FAME). The research addresses the absence of robust methods for supporting the software process management life cycle. FAME employs a novel, model-based approach in providing automated support for different activities in the software development life cycle including project definition, process design, process analysis, process enactment, process execution status monitoring, and execution status-triggered process redesign. FAME applications extend beyond the software development domain to areas such as agile manufacturing, project management, logistics planning, and business process reengineering.
We provide an overview of UNICOM, an inductive theorem prover for equational logic which isbased on refined rewriting and completion techniques. The architecture of the system as well as itsfunctionality are described. Moreover, an insight into the most important aspects of the internalproof process is provided. This knowledge about how the central inductive proof componentof the system essentially works is crucial for human users who want to solve non-trivial prooftasks with UNICOM and thoroughly analyse potential failures. The presentation is focussedon practical aspects of understanding and using UNICOM. A brief but complete description ofthe command interface, an installation guide, an example session, a detailed extended exampleillustrating various special features and a collection of successfully handled examples are alsoincluded.
Cooperative decision making involves a continuous process, assessing the validity ofdata, information and knowledge acquired and inferred by the colleagues, that is, the shared knowledge space must be transparent. The ACCORD methodology provides aninterpretation framework for the mapping of domain facts - constituting the world model of the expert - onto conceptual models, which can be expressed in formalrepresentations. The ACCORD-BPM framework allows a stepwise and inarbitrary reconstruction of the problem solving competence of BPM experts as a prerequisite foran appropriate architecture of both BPM knowledge bases and the BPM-"reasoning device".
A map for an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) in an indoor environment for the purpose ofcontinuous position and orientation estimation is discussed. Unlike many other approaches, this map is not based on geometrical primitives like lines and polygons. An algorithm is shown , where the sensordata of a laser range finder can be used to establish this map without a geometrical interpretation of the data. This is done by converting single laser radar scans to statistical representations of the environ-ment, so that a crosscorrelation of an actu al converted scan and this representative results into the actual position and orientation in a global coordinate system. The map itsel f is build of representative scansfor the positions where the AMR has been, so that it is able to find its position and orientation by c omparing the actual scan with a scan stored in the map.
We present a mathematical knowledge base containing the factual know-ledge of the first of three parts of a textbook on semi-groups and automata,namely "P. Deussen: Halbgruppen und Automaten". Like almost all math-ematical textbooks this textbook is not self-contained, but there are somealgebraic and set-theoretical concepts not being explained. These concepts areadded to the knowledge base. Furthermore there is knowledge about the nat-ural numbers, which is formalized following the first paragraph of "E. Landau:Grundlagen der Analysis".The data base is written in a sorted higher-order logic, a variant of POST ,the working language of the proof development environment OmegaGamma mkrp. We dis-tinguish three different types of knowledge: axioms, definitions, and theorems.Up to now, there are only 2 axioms (natural numbers and cardinality), 149definitions (like that for a semi-group), and 165 theorems. The consistency ofsuch knowledge bases cannot be proved in general, but inconsistencies may beimported only by the axioms. Definitions and theorems should not lead to anyinconsistency since definitions form conservative extensions and theorems areproved to be consequences.
This paper addresses a model of analogy-driven theorem proving that is more general and cognitively more adequate than previous approaches. The model works at the level ofproof-plans. More precisely, we consider analogy as a control strategy in proof planning that employs a source proof-plan to guide the construction of a proof-plan for the target problem. Our approach includes a reformulation of the source proof-plan. This is in accordance with the well known fact that constructing ananalogy in maths often amounts to first finding the appropriate representation which brings out the similarity of two problems, i.e., finding the right concepts and the right level of abstraction. Several well known theorems were processed by our analogy-driven proof-plan construction that could not be proven analogically by previous approaches.
The well-known and powerful proof principle by well-founded induction says that for verifying \(\forall x : P (x)\) for some property \(P\) it suffices to show \(\forall x : [[\forall y < x :P (y)] \Rightarrow P (x)] \) , provided \(<\) is a well-founded partial ordering on the domainof interest. Here we investigate a more general formulation of this proof principlewhich allows for a kind of parameterized partial orderings \(<_x\) which naturallyarises in some cases. More precisely, we develop conditions under which theparameterized proof principle \(\forall x : [[\forall y <_x x : P (y)] \Rightarrow P (x)]\) is sound in thesense that \(\forall x : [[\forall y <_x x : P (y)] \Rightarrow P (x)] \Rightarrow \forall x : P (x)\) holds, and givecounterexamples demonstrating that these conditions are indeed essential.
We investigate one of the classical problems of the theory ofterm rewriting, namely termination. We present an ordering for compar-ing higher-order terms that can be utilized for testing termination anddecreasingness of higher-order conditional term rewriting systems. Theordering relies on a first-order interpretation of higher-order terms anda suitable extension of the RPO.
Due to continuously increasing demands in the area of advanced robot control, it became necessary to speed up the computation. One way to reduce the computation time is to distribute the computation onto several processing units. In this survey we present different approaches to parallel computation of robot kinematics and Jacobian. Thereby, we discuss both the forward and the reverse problem. We introduce a classification scheme and classify the references by this scheme.
The term enterprise modelling, synonymous with enterprise engineering, refers to methodologies developed for modelling activities, states, time, and cost within an enterprise architecture. They serve as a vehicle for evaluating and modelling activities resources etc. CIM - OSA (Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open Systems Architecture) is a methodology for modelling computer integrated environments, and its major objective is the appropriate integration of enterprise operations by means of efficient information exchange within the enterprise. PERA is another methodology for developing models of computer integrated manufacturing environments. The department of industrial engineering in Toronto proposed the development of ontologies as a vehicle for enterprise integration. The paper reviews the work carried out by various researchers and computing departments on the area of enterprise modelling and points out other modelling problems related to enterprise integration.
This report presents the properties of a specification of the domain of process planning for rotary symmetrical workpieces. The specification results from a model for problem solving in this domain that involves different reasoners, one of which is an AI planner that achieves goals corresponding to machining workpieces by considering certain operational restrictions of the domain. When planning with SNLP (McAllester and Rosenblitt, 1991), we will show that the resulting plans have the property of minimizing the use of certain key operations. Further, we will show that, for elastic protected plans (Kambhampati et al., 1996) such as the ones produced by SNLP, the goals corresponding to machining parts of a workpiece are OE-constrained trivial serializable, a special form of trivial serializability (Barrett and Weld, 1994). However, we will show that planning with SNLP in this domain can be very difficult: elastic protected plans for machining parts of a workpiece are nonmergeable. Finally, we will show that, for sufix, prefix or sufix and prefix plans such as the ones produced by state-space planners, it is not possible to have both properties, being OEconstrained trivial serializable and minimizing the use of the key operations, at the same time.
A Tailored Real Time Temporal Logic for Specifying Requirements of Building Automation Systems
(1999)
A tailored real time temporal logic for specifying requirements of building automation systems is introduced and analyzed. The logic features several new real time operators, which are chosen with regard to the application area. The new operators improve the conciseness and readability of requirements as compared to a general-purpose real time temporal logic. In addition, some of the operators also enhance the expressiveness of the logic. A number of properties of the new operators are presented and proven.
Concept mapping is a simple and intuitive visual form of knowledge representation. Concept maps can be categorized as informal or formal, where the latter is characterized by implementing a semantics model constraining their components. Software engineering is a domain that has successfully adopted formal concept maps to visualize and specify complex systems. Automated tools have been implemented to support these models although their semantic constraints are hardcoded within the systems and hidden from users. This paper presents the Constraint Graphs and jKSImapper systems. Constraint Graphs is a flexible and powerful graphical system interface for specifying concept mapping notations. In addition, jKSImapper is a multi-user concept mapping editor for the Internet and the World Wide Web. Together, these systems aim to support user-definable formal concept mapping notations and distributed collaboration on the Internet and the World Wide Web.
The CBR team of the LISA is involved in several applied research projects based on the CBR paradigm. These applications use adaptation to solve the specific problems they face. So, we have capitalized some experience about how can be expressed and formalized adaptation processes. The bibliography on the subject is quite important but demonstrates a lake of formalism. At most, there exists some classifications about different types of adaptation.
We present a way to describe Reason Maintenance Systems using the sameformalism for justification based as well as for assumption based approaches.This formalism uses labelled formulae and thus is a special case of Gabbay'slabelled deductive systems. Since our approach is logic based, we are able toget a semantics oriented description of the systems in question.Instead of restricting ourselves to e.g. propositional Horn formulae, as wasdone in the past, we admit arbitrary logics. This enables us to characterizesystems as a whole, including both the reason maintenance component and theproblem solver, nevertheless maintaining a separation between the basic logicand the part that describes the label propagation. The possibility to freely varythe basic logic enables us to not only describe various existing systems, but canhelp in the design of completely new ones.We also show, that it is possible to implement systems based directly on ourlabelled logic and plead for "incremental calculi" crafted to attack undecidablelogics.Furthermore it is shown that the same approach can be used to handledefault reasoning, if the propositional labels are upgraded to first order.
Caching has long been used to reduce average access latency, from registers and memory pages cached by hardware, to the application level such as a web browser retaining retrieved documents. We focus here on the high-level caching of potentially shared networked documents and define two terms in relation to this type of caching: Zero latency refers to the condition where access to a document produces a cache hit on the local machine, that is, there is little or no latency due to the network (we assume that latency due to local disk and memory access is insignificant in comparison to network latency). A document with zero latency usually has been placed in the cache after a previous access, or has been pulled there through some prefetching mechanism. Negative latency refers to automatic presentation, or push, of a document to a user based on a prediction that the user will want that document. With an ideal system, a user would be presented with documents either that she was about to request, or that she would not know to request but that would be immediately useful to her.
We will answer a question posed in [DJK91], and will show that Huet's completion algorithm [Hu81] becomes incomplete, i.e. it may generate a term rewriting system that is not confluent, if it is modified in a way that the reduction ordering used for completion can be changed during completion provided that the new ordering is compatible with the actual rules. In particular, we will show that this problem may not only arise if the modified completion algorithm does not terminate: Even if the algorithm terminates without failure, the generated finite noetherian term rewriting system may be non-confluent. Most existing implementations of the Knuth-Bendix algorithm provide the user with help in choosing a reduction ordering: If an unorientable equation is encountered, then the user has many options, especially, the one to orient the equation manually. The integration of this feature is based on the widespread assumption that, if equations are oriented by hand during completion and the completion process terminates with success, then the generated finite system is a maybe non terminating but locally confluent system (see e.g. [KZ89]). Our examples will show that this assumption is not true.
The reasoning power of human-oriented plan-based reasoning systems is primarilyderived from their domain-specific problem solving knowledge. Such knowledge is, how-ever, intrinsically incomplete. In order to model the human ability of adapting existingmethods to new situations we present in this work a declarative approach for represent-ing methods, which can be adapted by so-called meta-methods. Since apparently thesuccess of this approach relies on the existence of general and strong meta-methods,we describe several meta-methods of general interest in detail by presenting the prob-lem solving process of two familiar classes of mathematical problems. These examplesshould illustrate our philosophy of proof planning as well: besides planning with thecurrent repertoire of methods, the repertoire of methods evolves with experience inthat new ones are created by meta-methods which modify existing ones.
Accelerating the maturation process within the software engineering discipline may result in boosts of development productivity. One way to enable this acceleration is to develop tools and processes to mimic evolution of traditional engineering disciplines. Principles established in traditional engineering disciplines represent high-level guidance to constructing these tools and processes. This paper discusses two principles found in the traditional engineering disciplines and how these principles can apply to mature the software engineering discipline. The discussion is concretized through description of the Collaborative Management Environment, a software system under collaborative development among several national laboratories.
This paper shows an approach to profit from type information about planning objects in a partial-order planner. The approach turns out to combine representational and computational advantages. On the one hand, type hierarchies allow better structuring of domain specifications. On the other hand, operators contain type constraints which reduce the search space of the planner as they partially achieve the functionality of filter conditions.
Integrated project management means that design and planning are interleaved with plan execution, allowing both the design and plan to be changed as necessary. This requires that the right effects of change are propagated through the plan and design. When this is distributed among designers and planners, no one may have all of the information to perform such propagation and it is important to identify what effects should be propagated to whom when. We describe a set of dependencies among plan and design elements that allow such notification by a set of message-passing software agents. The result is to provide a novel level of computer support for complex projects.
Based on the experiences from an autonomous mobile robot project called MOBOT-III, we found hard realtime-constraints for the operating- system-design. ALBATROSS is "A flexible multi-tasking and realtime network-operating-system-kernel". The focusin this article is on a communication-scheme fulfilling the previous demanded assurances. The centralchapters discuss the shared buffer management and the way to design the communication architecture.Some further aspects beside the strict realtime-requirements like the possibilities to control and watch a running system, are mentioned. ALBATROSS is actually implemented on a multi-processor VMEbus-system.
Based on experiences from an autonomous mobile robot project called MOBOT -III, we found hard realtime-constraints for the operating-system-design. ALBATROSS is "A flexible multi-tasking and realtime network-operatingsystem-kernel", not limited to mobile- robot-projects only, but which might be useful also wherever you have to guarantee a high reliability of a realtime-system. The focus in this article is on a communication-scheme fulfilling the demanded (hard realtime-) assurances although not implying time-delays or jitters on the critical informationchannels. The central chapters discuss a locking-free shared buffer management, without the need for interrupts and a way to arrange the communication architecture in order to produce minimal protocol-overhead and short cycle-times. Most of the remaining communication-capacity (if there is any) is used for redundant transfers, increasing the reliability of the whole system. ALBATROSS is actually implemented on a multi-processor VMEbus-system.
ALICE
(1994)
This paper presents a new kind of abstraction, which has been developed for the purpose of proofplanning. The basic idea of this paper is to abstract a given theorem and to find an abstractproof of it. Once an abstract proof has been found, this proof has to be refined to a real proofof the original theorem. We present a goal oriented abstraction for the purpose of equality proofplanning, which is parameterized by common parts of the left- and right-hand sides of the givenequality. Therefore, this abstraction technique provides an abstract equality problem which ismore adequate than those generated by the abstractions known so far. The presented abstractionalso supports the heuristic search process based on the difference reduction paradigm. We give aformal definition of the abstract space including the objects and their manipulation. Furthermore,we prove some properties in order to allow an efficient implementation of the presented abstraction.
There are two general approaches to providing for isochronous streams in the current Internet. The first approach is the resource reservation approach through protocols such as RSVP, or ATM technology. This provides bandwidth guarantees, however, it also requires significant upgrading of resources in the underlying network. The other common approach is adaptive rate control where the end-system has control of its rate according to feedback from the client population. This approach cannot guarantee timely delivery and raises some scaling questions, however a properly implemented scheme does improve quality and it requires no changes to the underlying IP network. Hence, there exists a dichotomy of requirements ; 1. To cater for reservation protocols or 'hooks' for future reservation components, and 2. To provide an architecture which provides an application controlled QoS scheme, which scales to the size of the current Internet in a best- effort architecture.
An agent-based approach to managing distributed, multi-platform software development projects
(1999)
This paper describes work undertaken within the context of the P3 (Project and Process Prompter) Project which aims to develop the Prompter tool, a 'decision-support tool to assist in the planning and managing of a software development project'. Prompter will have the ability to help software project managers to assimilate best practice and 'know how' in the field of software project management and incorporate expert critiquing to assist with solving the complex problems associated with software project management. This paper focuses on Prompters agent- based approach to tackling the problems of distributed, platform independent support.
In 1978, Klop demonstrated that a rewrite system constructed by adding the untyped lambda calculus, which has the Church-Rosser property, to a Church-Rosser first-order algebraic rewrite system may not be Church-Rosser. In contrast, Breazu-Tannen recently showed that argumenting any Church-Rosser first-order algebraic rewrite system with the simply-typed lambda calculus results in a Church-Rosser rewrite system. In addition, Breazu-Tannen and Gallier have shown that the second-order polymorphic lambda calculus can be added to such rewrite systems without compromising the Church-Rosser property (for terms which can be provably typed). There are other systems for which a Church-Rosser result would be desirable, among them being X^t+SP+FIX, the simply-typed lambda calculus extended with surjective pairing and fixed points. This paper will show that Klop's untyped counterexample can be lifted to a typed system to demonstrate that X^t+SP+FIX is not Church-Rosser.
We propose an approach to the problem of proof control for our new first-order inductive theorem prover QuodLibet that is characterized by a great deal of flexibility w.r.t. the forms of proof control the prover supports. The approach is based on so-called (proof) tactics, i.e. proof control routines written in a special proof control language named QML. QuodLibet provides a set of tactics (in addition to the elementary inference rules), which range from tactics for trivial simplification steps to tactics representing comprehensive inductive proof strategies. Moreover, QuodLibet allows new tactics that are written by the user in QML to be integrated into the system to dynamically extend its functionality.
We describe a technique to make application programs fault tolerant. This techADnique is based on the concept of checkpointing from an active program to one ormore passive backup copies which serve as an abstraction of stable memory. Ifthe primary copy fails, one of the backup copies takes over and resumes processADing service requests. After each failure a new backup copy is created in order torestore the replication degree of the service. All mechanisms necessary to achieveand maintain fault tolerance can be added automatically to the code of a nonADfaulttolerant server, thus making fault tolerance completely transparent for the applicaADtion programmer.
In recent years the demand on business process modelling (BPM) became apparent in many different communities, e.g. information systems engineering, requirements engineering [KiB94], software engineering and knowledge engineering (e.g. [BrV94], [SWH+94]). This suggests to aim at a unifying view on business process modelling in all these disciplines. To achieve the business goals some problems which obstruct these goals must be solved. This can be done either by restructuring the business process, by application of standard software, or by developing individual software components such as knowledge based systems (KBSs). To be able to model business goals and to analyse problems occurring during the business processes these processes including organisational structures and activities have to be modelled. This is also true when building a KBS in an enterprise environment. Because the KBS is only a small part of the whole business organisation, it must be embedded into or at least linked to all relevant business processes, i.e. it should not be a stand-alone solution. For this purpose we extend the MIKE approach [AFS96] in the BMBF project WORKS (Work Oriented Design of Knowledge Systems) by offering business models for modelling relevant aspects of an enterprise. To be able to define an integrated framework with other possibilties to improve an enterprise (e.g. information systems engineering) we determine the standard views of an enterprise. Next we define the views, that are necessary for developing a KBS.
Mechanised reasoning systems and computer algebra systems have apparentlydifferent objectives. Their integration is, however, highly desirable, since in manyformal proofs both of the two different tasks, proving and calculating, have to beperformed. Even more importantly, proof and computation are often interwoven andnot easily separable. In the context of producing reliable proofs, the question howto ensure correctness when integrating a computer algebra system into a mechanisedreasoning system is crucial. In this contribution, we discuss the correctness prob-lems that arise from such an integration and advocate an approach in which thecalculations of the computer algebra system are checked at the calculus level of themechanised reasoning system. This can be achieved by adding a verbose mode to thecomputer algebra system which produces high-level protocol information that can beprocessed by an interface to derive proof plans. Such a proof plan in turn can beexpanded to proofs at different levels of abstraction, so the approach is well-suited forproducing a high-level verbalised explication as well as for a low-level machine check-able calculus-level proof. We present an implementation of our ideas and exemplifythem using an automatically solved extended example.
The paper presents a process-oriented view on knowledge management in software development. We describe requirements on knowledge management systems from a process-oriented perspective, introduce a process modeling language MILOS and its use for knowledge management. Then we explain how a process-oriented knowledge management system can be implemented using advanced but available information technologies.
This paper describes an Internet-scalable knowledge base infrastructure for managing the knowledge used by an in-telligent software productivity infrastructure system. The infrastructure provides workable solutions for several significant issues: (1) Internetunique names for pieces of knowledge; (2) multi-platform, multi-language support; (3) distributed knowledge base synchronization mechanisms; (4) support for extensive customized variations in knowledge content, and (5) knowledge caching mechanisms for improved system performance. The infrastructure described here is a workable example of the kind of infrastructure that will be required to manage the evolution and reuse of millions of pieces of knowledge in the future.
The increasing use of distributed computer systems leads to an increasingneed for distributed applications. Their development in various domains like of-fice automation or computer integrated manufacturing is not sufficiently sup-ported by current techniques. New software engineering concepts are needed inthe three areas 'languages', 'tools', and 'environments'. We believe that object-oriented techniques and graphics support are key approaches to major achieve-ments in all three areas. As a consequence, we developed a universal object-oriented graphical editor ODE as one of our basic tools (tool building tool).ODE is based on the object-oriented paradigm, with some important extensionslike built-in object relations. It has an extensible functional language which al-lows for customization of the editor. ODE was developed as part of DOCASE, asoftware production environment for distributed applications. The basic ideas ofDOCASE will be presented and the requirements for ODE will be pointed out.Then ODE will be described in detail, followed by a sample customization ofODE: the one for the DOCASE design language.
Typical examples, that is, examples that are representative for a particular situationor concept, play an important role in human knowledge representation and reasoning.In real life situations more often than not, instead of a lengthy abstract characteriza-tion, a typical example is used to describe the situation. This well-known observationhas been the motivation for various investigations in experimental psychology, whichalso motivate our formal characterization of typical examples, based on a partial orderfor their typicality. Reasoning by typical examples is then developed as a special caseof analogical reasoning using the semantic information contained in the correspondingconcept structures. We derive new inference rules by replacing the explicit informa-tion about connections and similarity, which are normally used to formalize analogicalinference rules, by information about the relationship to typical examples. Using theseinference rules analogical reasoning proceeds by checking a related typical example,this is a form of reasoning based on semantic information from cases.
This case study examines in detail the theorems and proofs that are shownby analogy in a mathematical textbook on semigroups and automata, thatis widely used as an undergraduate textbook in theoretical computer scienceat German universities (P. Deussen, Halbgruppen und Automaten, Springer1971). The study shows the important role of restructuring a proof for findinganalogous subproofs, and of reformulating a proof for the analogical trans-formation. It also emphasizes the importance of the relevant assumptions ofa known proof, i.e., of those assumptions actually used in the proof. In thisdocument we show the theorems, the proof structure, the subproblems andthe proofs of subproblems and their analogues with the purpose to providean empirical test set of cases for automated analogy-driven theorem proving.Theorems and their proofs are given in natural language augmented by theusual set of mathematical symbols in the studied textbook. As a first step weencode the theorems in logic and show the actual restructuring. Secondly, wecode the proofs in a Natural Deduction calculus such that a formal analysisbecomes possible and mention reformulations that are necessary in order toreveal the analogy.
Analogy in CLAM
(1999)
CL A M is a proof planner, developed by the Dream group in Edinburgh,that mainly operates for inductive proofs. This paper addresses the questionhow an analogy model that I developed independently of CL A M can beapplied to CL A M and it presents analogy-driven proof plan construction as acontrol strategy of CL A M . This strategy is realized as a derivational analogythat includes the reformulation of proof plans. The analogical replay checkswhether the reformulated justifications of the source plan methods hold inthe target as a permission to transfer the method to the target plan. SinceCL A M has very efficient heuristic search strategies, the main purpose ofthe analogy is to suggest lemmas, to replay not commonly loaded methods,to suggest induction variables and induction terms, and to override controlrather than to construct a target proof plan that can be built by CL A Mitself more efficiently.
The amount of user interaction is the prime cause of costs in interactiveprogram verification. This paper describes an internal analogy techniquethat reuses subproofs in the verification of state-based specifications. Itidentifies common patterns of subproofs and their justifications in orderto reuse these subproofs; thus significant savings on the number of userinteractions in a verification proof are achievable.
Automatic proof systems are becoming more and more powerful.However, the proofs generated by these systems are not met withwide acceptance, because they are presented in a way inappropriatefor human understanding.In this paper we pursue two different, but related, aims. First wedescribe methods to structure and transform equational proofs in away that they conform to human reading conventions. We developalgorithms to impose a hierarchical structure on proof protocols fromcompletion based proof systems and to generate equational chainsfrom them.Our second aim is to demonstrate the difficulties of obtaining suchprotocols from distributed proof systems and to present our solutionto these problems for provers using the TEAMWORK method. Wealso show that proof systems using this method can give considerablehelp in structuring the proof listing in a way analogous to humanbehaviour.In addition to theoretical results we also include descriptions onalgorithms, implementation notes, examples and data on a variety ofexamples.
We present a new software architecture in which all concepts necessary to achieve fault tolerance can be added to an appli- cation automatically without any source code changes. As a case study, we consider the problem of providing a reliable service despite node failures by executing a group of replicat- ed servers. Replica creation and management as well as fail- ure detection and recovery are performed automatically by a separate fault tolerance layer (ft-layer) which is inserted be- tween the server application and the operating system kernel. The layer is invisible for the application since it provides the same functional interface as the operating system kernel, thus making the fault tolerance property of the service completely transparent for the application. A major advantage of our ar- chitecture is that the layer encapsulates both fault tolerance mechanisms and policies. This allows for maximum flexibility in the choice of appropriate methods for fault tolerance with- out any changes in the application code.
Das System ART (ASF RRL Translation) stellt im wesentlichen eine Umgebung dar,in welcher die Modularisierbarkeit von Beweisen (Induktionsbeweisen über Gleichungs-spezifikationen) untersucht werden kann. Es wurde die bereits bestehende Spezifikati-onsprache ASF (siehe [BeHeKl89]), in welcher modularisierte Spezifikationen möglichsind, so erweitert, daß zusätzlich auch Beweisaufgaben spezifiziert werden können. Imfolgenden wird diese erweiterte Spezifikationsprache auch ASF genannt. Als Bewei-ser für die Beweisaufgaben einer Spezifikation wurde RRL (siehe [KaZh89]) gewählt.RRL kann sowohl Kommandos aus einem File abarbeiten, wie auch Sitzungsprotokolleanfertigen, mit deren Hilfe sich die Beweisverläufe und Benutzereingaben der entspre-chenden RRL-Sitzung rekonstruieren lassen. In ART kann nun eine ASF-Spezifikation,die Beweisaufgaben umfassen kann, in ein File übersetzt werden, welches von RRLabgearbeitet werden kann. Dies wird im folgenden kurz mit 'Übersetzung von ASF nach RRL' bezeichnet. Bei der Abarbeitung eines solchen Files wird von RRL ein Sit-zungsprotokoll angelegt. ART kann dieses Sitzungsprotokoll dazu heranziehen, neueErgebnisse, wie etwa den erfolgreichen Beweis einer Beweisaufgabe, zu ermitteln, umdiese Ergebnisse der ursprüngliche Spezifikation hinzuzufügen. Dies wird im folgendenkurz mit 'Rückübersetzung von RRL nach ASF' bezeichnet. Im Kern besteht ART alsoaus einer Komponente zur Übersetzung von ASF nach RRL und aus einer Komponentezur Rückübersetzung von RRL nach ASF.
Ohne auf wesentliche Aspekte der in [Bergstra&al.89] vorgestellten alge-braischen Spezifikationssprache ASF zu verzichten, haben wir ASF um die folgenden Konzepteerweitert: Während in ASF einmal exportierte Namen bis zur Spitze der Modulhierarchie sichtbarbleiben müssen, ermöglicht ASF + ein differenziertes Verdecken von Signaturnamen. Das fehlerhafteVermischen unterschiedlicher Strukturen, welches in ASF beim Import verschiedener Aktualisie-rungen desselben parametrisierten Moduls auftritt, wird in ASF + durch eine adäquatere Form derParameterbindung vermieden. Das neue Namensraum_Konzept von ASF + erlaubt es dem Spe-zifizierer, einerseits die Herkunft verdeckter Namen direkt zu identifizieren und anderseits beimImport eines Moduls auszudrücken, ob dieses Modul nur benutzt oder in seinen wesentlichen Ei-genschaften verändert werden soll. Im ersten Fall kann er auf eine einzige global zur Verfügungstehende Version zugreifen; im zweiten Fall muß er eine Kopie des Moduls importieren. Schließlicherlaubt ASF + semantische Bedingungen an Parameter und die Angabe von Beweiszielen.
In nebenläufigen Systemen erleichtert das Konzept der Atomarität vonOperationen, konkurrierende Zugriffe in größere, leichter beherrschbareAbschnitte zu unterteilen. Wenn wir aber Spezifikationen in der forma-len Beschreibungstechnik Estelle betrachten, erweist es sich, daß es un-ter bestimmten Umständen schwierig ist, die Atomarität der sogenanntenTransitionen bei Implementationen exakt einzuhalten, obwohl diese Ato-marität eine konzeptuelle Grundlage der Semantik von Estelle ist. Es wirdaufgezeigt, wie trotzdem sowohl korrekte als auch effiziente nebenläufigeImplementationen erreicht werden können. Schließlich wird darauf hinge-wiesen, daß die das Problem auslösenden Aktionen oft vom Spezifiziererleicht von vorneherein vermieden werden können; und dies gilt auch überden Kontext von Estelle hinaus.
The feature interaction problem in telecommunications systems increasingly ob-structs the evolution of such systems. We develop formal detection criteria whichrender a necessary (but less than sufficient) condition for feature interactions. It can be checked mechanically and points out all potentially critical spots. Thesehave to be analysed manually. The resulting resolution decisions are incorporatedformally. Some prototype tool support is already available. A prerequisite forformal criteria is a formal definition of the problem. Since the notions of featureand feature interaction are often used in a rather fuzzy way, we attempt a formaldefinition first and discuss which aspects can be included in a formalization (andtherefore in a detection method). This paper describes ongoing work.
Automata-Theoretic vs. Property-Oriented Approaches for the Detection of Feature Interactions in IN
(1999)
The feature interaction problem in Intelligent Networks obstructs more and morethe rapid introduction of new features. Detecting such feature interactions turns out to be a big problem. The size of the systems and the sheer computational com-plexity prevents the system developer from checking manually any feature against any other feature. We give an overview on current (verification) approaches and categorize them into property-oriented and automata-theoretic approaches. A comparisonturns out that each approach complements the other in a certain sense. We proposeto apply both approaches together in order to solve the feature interaction problem.
Independent development of system components may cause integration problems if their interaction is faulty. This problem may be solved by enforcing required component interactions at the system level. We have developed a system that automatically integrates control-oriented components, to make them consistent with aggregate system behavior re- quirements. Ourmethod is based on the automated synchronization method that modifies independently designed compo-nents to make them satisfy a set of user defined receptive safety properties. The automated synchroniza-tion allows us to design the compo nents as independent controllers that satisfy their individual requirements and to compose a correct executable system by combining the components and enforcing their interaction constraints. This approach gives component designers the freedom to design independently, and produce a functional system by combining the components and specifying their interaction requirements.
Today's communication systems are typically structured into several layers, where each layer realizes a fixed set of protocol functionalities. These functionalities have been carefully chosen such that a wide range of applications can be supported and protocols work in a general environment of networks. However, due to evolving network technologies as well as increased and varying demands of modern applications general-purpose protocol stacks are not always adequate. To improve this situation new flexible communication architectures have been developed which enable the configuration of customized communication subsystems by composing a proper set of reusable building blocks. In particular, several approaches to automatic configuration of communication subsystems have been reported in the literature. This report gives an overview of theses approaches (F-CCS, Da CaPo, x-Kernel, and ADAPTIVE) and, in particular, defines a framework, which identifies common architectural issues and configuration tasks.
Bestimmung der Ähnlichkeit in der fallbasierten Diagnose mit simulationsfähigen Maschinenmodellen
(1999)
Eine Fallbasis mit bereits gelösten Diagnoseproblemen Wissen über die Struktur der Maschine Wissen über die Funktion der einzelnen Bauteile (konkret und abstrakt) Die hier vorgestellte Komponente setzt dabei auf die im Rahmen des Moltke-Projektes entwickelten Systeme Patdex[Wes91] (fallbasierte Diagnose) und iMake [Sch92] bzw. Make [Reh91] (modellbasierte Generierung von Moltke- Wissensbasen) auf.
Abstraction is one of the most promising approaches to improve the performance of problem solvers. In several domains abstraction by dropping sentences of a domain description - as used in most hierarchical planners - has proven useful. In this paper we present examples which illustrate significant drawbacks of abstraction by dropping sentences. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose a more general view of abstraction involving the change of representation language. We have developed a new abstraction methodology and a related sound and complete learning algorithm that allows the complete change of representation language of planning cases from concrete to abstract. However, to achieve a powerful change of the representation language, the abstract language itself as well as rules which describe admissible ways of abstracting states must be provided in the domain model. This new abstraction approach is the core of PARIS (Plan Abstraction and Refinement in an Integrated System), a system in which abstract planning cases are automatically learned from given concrete cases. An empirical study in the domain of process planning in mechanical engineering shows significant advantages of the proposed reasoning from abstract cases over classical hierarchical planning.^
Die Verwendung von existierenden Planungsansätzen zur Lösung von realen Anwendungs- problemen führt meist schnell zur Erkenntnis, dass eine vorliegende Problemstellung im Prinzip zwar lösbar ist, der exponentiell anwachsende Suchraum jedoch nur die Behandlung relativ kleiner Aufgabenstellungen erlaubt. Beobachtet man jedoch menschliche Planungsexperten, so sind diese in der Lage bei komplexen Problemen den Suchraum durch Abstraktion und die Verwendung bekannter Fallbeispiele als Heuristiken, entscheident zu verkleinern und so auch für schwierige Aufgabenstellungen zu einer akzeptablen Lösung zu gelangen. In dieser Arbeit wollen wir am Beispiel der Arbeitsplanung ein System vorstellen, das Abstraktion und fallbasierte Techniken zur Steuerung des Inferenzprozesses eines nichtlinearen, hierarchischen Planungssystems einsetzt und so die Komplexität der zu lösenden Gesamtaufgabe reduziert.
We study deterministic conditional rewrite systems, i.e. conditional rewrite systemswhere the extra variables are not totally free but 'input bounded'. If such a systemR is quasi-reductive then !R is decidable and terminating. We develop a critical paircriterion to prove confluence if R is quasi-reductive and strongly deterministic. In thiscase we prove that R is logical, i.e./!R==R holds. We apply our results to proveHorn clause programs to be uniquely terminating.This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 314, Project D4
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit beschreiben wir die wesentlichen Merkmale der CAPlan-Architektur, die die interaktive Bearbeitung von Planungsproblemen ermöglichen. Anhand des SNLP-Algorithmus, der der Architektur zugrunde liegt, werden die im Laufe eines Planungsprozesses auftretenden Entscheidungspunkte charakterisiert. Mit Hilfe von frei definierbaren Kontrollkomponenten kann das Verhalten an diesen Entscheidungspunkte festgelegt werden, wodurch eine flexible Steuerung des Planungsprozesses ermöglicht wird. Planungsziele und -entscheidungen werden in einem gerichteten azyklischen Graphen verwaltet, der ihre kausalen Abhängigkeiten widerspiegelt. Im Gegensatz zu einem Stack, der typischerweise zur Verwaltung von Entscheidungen eingesetzt wird, erlaubt die graphbasierte Repräsentation die flexible Rücknahme einer Entscheidung, ohne alle zeitlich danach getroffenen Entscheidungen ebenfalls zurücknehmen zu müssen.
It is generally agreed that one of the most challenging issues facing the case-based reasoning community is that of adaptation. To date the lion's share of CBR research has concentrated on the retrieval of similar cases, and the result is a wide range of quality retrieval techniques. However, retrieval is just the first part of the CBR equation, because once a similar case has been retrieved it must be adapted. Adaptation research is still in its earliest stages, and researchers are still trying to properly understand and formulate the important issues. In this paper I describe a treatment of adaptation in the context of a case-based reasoning system for software design, called Deja Vu. Deja Vu is particularly interesting, not only because it performs automatic adaptation of retrieved cases, but also because it uses a variety of techniques to try and reduce and predict the degree of adaptation necessary.
Contrary to symbolic learning approaches, that represent a learned concept explicitly, case-based approaches describe concepts implicitly by a pair (CB; sim), i.e. by a measure of similarity sim and a set CB of cases. This poses the question if there are any differences concerning the learning power of the two approaches. In this article we will study the relationship between the case base, the measure of similarity, and the target concept of the learning process. To do so, we transform a simple symbolic learning algorithm (the version space algorithm) into an equivalent case-based variant. The achieved results strengthen the hypothesis of the equivalence of the learning power of symbolic and casebased methods and show the interdependency between the measure used by a case-based algorithm and the target concept.
Case-based knowledge acquisition, learning and problem solving for diagnostic real world tasks
(1999)
Within this paper we focus on both the solution of real, complex problems using expert system technology and the acquisition of the necessary knowledge from a case-based reasoning point of view. The development of systems which can be applied to real world problems has to meet certain requirements. E.g., all available information sources have to be identified and utilized. Normally, this involves different types of knowledge for which several knowledge representation schemes are needed, because no scheme is equally natural for all sources. Facing empirical knowledge it is important to complement the use of manually compiled, statistic and otherwise induced knowledge by the exploitation of the intuitive understandability of case-based mechanisms. Thus, an integration of case-based and alternative knowledge acquisition and problem solving mechanisms is necessary. For this, the basis is to define the "role" which case-based inference can "play" within a knowledge acquisition workbench. We will discuss a concrete casebased architecture, which has been applied to technical diagnosis problems, and its integration into a knowledge acquisition workbench which includes compiled knowledge and explicit deep models, additionally.
Planning means constructing a course of actions to achieve a specified set of goals when starting from an initial situation. For example, determining a sequence of actions (a plan) for transporting goods from an initial location to some destination is a typical planning problem in the transportation domain. Many planning problems are of practical interest.
Case-Based Reasoning for Decision Support and Diagnostic Problem Solving: The INRECA Approach
(1995)
INRECA offers tools and methods for developing, validating, and maintaining decision support systems. INRECA's basic technologies are inductive and case-based reasoning, namely KATE -INDUCTION (cf., e.g., Manago, 1989; Manago, 1990) and S3-CASE, a software product based on PATDEX (cf., e.g., Wess,1991; Richter & Wess, 1991; Althoff & Wess, 1991). Induction extracts decision knowledge from case databases. It brings to light patterns among cases and helps monitoring trends over time. Case-based rea -soning relates the engineer's current problem to past experiences.
A translation contract is a binary predicate corrTransl(S,T) for source programs S and target programs T. It precisely specifies when T is considered to be a correct translation of S. A certifying compiler generates --in addittion to the target T-- a proof for corrTransl(S,T). Certifying compilers are important for the development of safety critical systems to establish the behavioral equivalence of high-level programs with their compiled assembler code. In this paper, we report on a certifying compiler, its proof techniques, and the underlying formal framework developed within the proof assistent Isabelle/HOL. The compiler uses a tiny C-like language as input, has an optimization phase, and generates MIPS code. The underlying translation contract is based on a trace semantics. We investigate design alternatives and discuss our experiences.
Constructing an analogy between a known and already proven theorem(the base case) and another yet to be proven theorem (the target case) oftenamounts to finding the appropriate representation at which the base and thetarget are similar. This is a well-known fact in mathematics, and it was cor-roborated by our empirical study of a mathematical textbook, which showedthat a reformulation of the representation of a theorem and its proof is in-deed more often than not a necessary prerequisite for an analogical inference.Thus machine supported reformulation becomes an important component ofautomated analogy-driven theorem proving too.The reformulation component proposed in this paper is embedded into aproof plan methodology based on methods and meta-methods, where the latterare used to change and appropriately adapt the methods. A theorem and itsproof are both represented as a method and then reformulated by the set ofmetamethods presented in this paper.Our approach supports analogy-driven theorem proving at various levels ofabstraction and in principle makes it independent of the given and often acci-dental representation of the given theorems. Different methods can representfully instantiated proofs, subproofs, or general proof methods, and hence ourapproach also supports these three kinds of analogy respectively. By attachingappropriate justifications to meta-methods the analogical inference can oftenbe justified in the sense of Russell.This paper presents a model of analogy-driven proof plan construction andfocuses on empirically extracted meta-methods. It classifies and formally de-scribes these meta-methods and shows how to use them for an appropriatereformulation in automated analogy-driven theorem proving.
The background of this paper is the area of case-based reasoning. This is a reasoning technique where one tries to use the solution of some problem which has been solved earlier in order to obta in a solution of a given problem. As example of types of problems where this kind of reasoning occurs very often is the diagnosis of diseases or faults in technical systems. In abstract terms this reduces to a classification task. A difficulty arises when one has not just one solved problem but when there are very many. These are called "cases" and they are stored in the case-base. Then one has to select an appropriate case which means to find one which is "similar" to the actual problem. The notion of similarity has raised much interest in this context. We will first introduce a mathematical framework and define some basic concepts. Then we will study some abstract phenomena in this area and finally present some methods developed and realized in a system at the University of Kaiserslautern.
Collecting Experience on the Systematic Development of CBR Applications using the INRECA Methodology
(1999)
This paper presents an overview of the INRECA methodology for building and maintaining CBR applications. This methodology supports the collection and reuse of experience on the systematic development of CBR applications. It is based on the experience factory and the software process modeling approach from software engineering. CBR development experience is documented using software process models and stored in different levels of generality in a three-layered experience base. Up to now, experience from 9 industrial projects enacted by all INRECA II partners has been collected.
Software development is becoming a more and more distributed process, which urgently needs supporting tools in the field of configuration management, software process/w orkflow management, communication and problem tracking. In this paper we present a new distributed software configuration management framework COMAND. It offers high availabilit y through replication and a mechanism to easily change and adapt the project structure to new business needs. To better understand and formally prove some properties of COMAND, we have modeled it in a formal technique based on distributed graph transformations. This formalism provides an intuitive rule-based description technique mainly for the dynamic behavior of the system on an abstract level. We use it here to model the replication subsystem.
A combination of a state-based formalism and a temporal logic is proposed to get an expressive language for various descriptions of reactive systems. Thereby it is possible to use a model as well as a property oriented specification style in one description. The descriptions considered here are those of the environment, the specification, and the design of a reactive system. It is possible to express e.g. the requirements of a reactive system by states and transitions between them together with further temporal formulas restricting the behaviors of the statecharts. It is shown, how this combined formalism can be used: The specification of a small example is given and a designed controller is proven correct with respect to this specification. The combination of the langugages is based on giving a temporal semantics of a state-based formalism (statecharts) using a temporal logic (TLA).
Real world planning tasks like manufacturing process planning often don't allow to formalize all of the relevant knowledge. Especially, preferences between alternatives are hard to acquire but have high influence on the efficiency of the planning process and the quality of the solution. We describe the essential features of the CAPlan planning architecture that supports cooperative problem solving to narrow the gap caused by absent preference and control knowledge. The architecture combines an SNLP-like base planner with mechanisms for explict representation and maintenance of dependencies between planning decisions. The flexible control interface of CAPlan allows a combination of autonomous and interactive planning in which a user can participate in the problem solving process. Especially, the rejection of arbitrary decisions by a user or dependency-directed backtracking mechanisms are supported by CAPlan.
Complete Eager Replay
(1996)
We present an algorithm for completely replaying previous problem solving experiences for plan-space planners. In our approach not only the solution trace is replayed, but also the explanations of failed attempts made by the first-principle planner. In this way, the capability of refitting previous solutions into new problems is improved.
We present an approach to prove several theorems in slightly different axiomsystems simultaneously. We represent the different problems as a taxonomy, i.e.a tree in which each node inherits all knowledge of its predecessors, and solve theproblems using inference steps on rules and equations with simple constraints,i.e. words identifying nodes in the taxonomy. We demonstrate that a substantialgain can be achieved by using taxonomic constraints, not only by avoiding therepetition of inference steps in the different problems but also by achieving runtimes that are much shorter than the accumulated run times when proving eachproblem separately.
We propose a specification language for the formalization of data types with par-tial or non-terminating operations as part of a rewrite-based logical frameworkfor inductive theorem proving. The language requires constructors for designat-ing data items and admits positive/negative conditional equations as axioms inspecifications. The (total algebra) semantics for such specifications is based onso-called data models. We present admissibility conditions that guarantee theunique existence of a distinguished data model with properties similar to thoseof the initial model of a usual equational specification. Since admissibility of aspecification requires confluence of the induced rewrite relation, we provide aneffectively testable confluence criterion which does not presuppose termination.
There are well known examples of monoids in literature which do not admit a finite andcanonical presentation by a semi-Thue system over a fixed alphabet, not even over an arbi-trary alphabet. We introduce conditional Thue and semi-Thue systems similar to conditionalterm rewriting systems as defined by Kaplan. Using these conditional semi-Thue systems wegive finite and canonical presentations of the examples mentioned above. Furthermore weshow, that each finitely generated monoid with decidable word problem is embeddable in amonoid which has a finite canonical conditional presentation.
We present a new criterion for confluence of (possibly) non-terminating left-linear term rewriting systems. The criterion is based on certain strong joinabil-ity properties of parallel critical pairs . We show how this criterion relates toother well-known results, consider some special cases and discuss some possibleextensions.
Visual Search has been investigated by many researchers inspired by the biological fact, that the sensory elements on the mammal retina are not equably distributed. Therefore the focus of attention (the area of the retina with the highest density of sensory elements) has to be directed in a way to efficiently gather data according to certain criteria. The work discussed in this article concentrates on applying a laser range finder instead of a silicon retina. The laser range finder is maximal focused at any time, but therefore a low resolution total-scene-image, available with camera-like devices from scratch on, cannot be used here. By adapting a couple of algorithms, the edge-scanning module steering the laser range finder is able to trace a detected edge. Based on the data scanned so far , two questions have to be answered. First: "Should the actual (edge-) scanning be interrupted in order to give another area of interest a chance of being investigated?" and second: "Where to start a new edge-scanning, after being interrupted?". These two decision-problems might be solved by a range of decision systems. The correctness of the decisions depends widely on the actual environment and the underlying rules may not be well initialized with a-priori knowledge. So we will present a version of a reinforcement decision system together with an overall scheme for efficiently controlling highly focused devices.
This paper is to present a new algorithm, called KNNcost, for learning feature weights for CBR systems used for classification. Unlike algorithms known so far, KNNcost considers the profits of a correct and the cost of a wrong decision. The need for this algorithm is motivated from two real-world applications, where cost and profits of decisions play a major role. We introduce a representation of accuracy, cost and profits of decisions and define the decision cost of a classification system. To compare accuracy optimization with cost optimization, we tested KNNacc against KNNcost. The first one optimizes classification accuracy with a conjugate gradient algorithm. The second one optimizes the decision cost of the CBR system, respecting cost and profits of the classifications. We present experiments with these two algorithms in a real application to demonstrate the usefulness of our approach.
We describe a hybrid case-based reasoning system supporting process planning for machining workpieces. It integrates specialized domain dependent reasoners, a feature-based CAD system and domain independent planning. The overall architecture is build on top of CAPlan, a partial-order nonlinear planner. To use episodic problem solving knowledge for both optimizing plan execution costs and minimizing search the case-based control component CAPlan/CbC has been realized that allows incremental acquisition and reuse of strategical problem solving experience by storing solved problems as cases and reusing them in similar situations. For effective retrieval of cases CAPlan/CbC combines domain-independent and domain-specific retrieval mechanisms that are based on the hierarchical domain model and problem representation.
Top-down and bottom-up theorem proving approaches have each specific ad-vantages and disadvantages. Bottom-up provers profit from strong redundancycontrol and suffer from the lack of goal-orientation, whereas top-down provers aregoal-oriented but have weak calculi when their proof lengths are considered. Inorder to integrate both approaches our method is to achieve cooperation betweena top-down and a bottom-up prover: The top-down prover generates subgoalclauses, then they are processed by a bottom-up prover. We discuss theoreticaspects of this methodology and we introduce techniques for a relevancy-basedfiltering of generated subgoal clauses. Experiments with a model eliminationand a superposition-based prover reveal the high potential of our cooperation approach.The author was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
We present a cooperation concept for automated theorem provers that isbased on a periodical interchange of selected results between several incarnationsof a prover. These incarnations differ from each other in the search heuristic theyemploy for guiding the search of the prover. Depending on the strengths' andweaknesses of these heuristics different knowledge and different communicationstructures are used for selecting the results to interchange.Our concept is easy to implement and can easily be integrated into alreadyexisting theorem provers. Moreover, the resulting cooperation allows the dis-tributed system to find proofs much faster than single heuristics working alone.We substantiate these claims by two case studies: experiments with the DiCoDesystem that is based on the condensed detachment rule and experiments with theSPASS system, a prover for first order logic with equality based on the super-position calculus. Both case studies show the improvements by our cooperationconcept.
Coordinating distributed software development projectsbecomes more difficult, as software becomes more complex, team sizes and organisational overheads increase,and software components are sourced from disparate places. We describe the development of a range of softwaretools to support coordination of such projects. Techniques we use include asynchronous and semi -synchronousediting, software process modelling and enactment, developer-specified coordination agents, and component-based tool integration.