Transforming Situation Calculus Action Theories for Optimised Reasoning

Abstract

Among the most frequent reasoning tasks in the situation calculus are projection queries that query the truth of conditions in a future state of affairs. However, in long running action sequences solving the projection problem is complex. The main contribution of this work is a new technique which allows the length of the action sequences to be reduced by reordering independent actions and removing dominated actions; maintaining semantic equivalence with respect to the original action theory. This transformation allows for the removal of actions that are problematic with respect to progression, allowing for periodical update of the action theory to reflect the current state of affairs. We pr..