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The stuffy room scenario

 

A problem arises when the well-known stuffy room scenario is formalized with a state constraint that when both vents are blocked by pillows the room is stuffy and changes in fluents are minimized. This can lead to the unintended model that when one vent is already blocked the action of blocking the other event causes the blocked vent to become unblocked in order to minimize change. Some complication of the formalism is required to deal with the phenomenon. Direct formalization in terms of actions and events avoids the difficulty. Also it corresponds better to the way we humans think about the problem, i.e. we think about the room becoming stuffy.

We use fluents tex2html_wrap_inline1081 , tex2html_wrap_inline1083 , and tex2html_wrap_inline1085 . We have the action events tex2html_wrap_inline1087 , tex2html_wrap_inline1089 , tex2html_wrap_inline1091 , tex2html_wrap_inline1093 and the internal events tex2html_wrap_inline1095 and tex2html_wrap_inline1097 . gif

Effect axioms:

  equation166

Occurrence axioms:

  equation174

The frame axioms are

  equation182

How they work is described in section 6.

We need to distinguish between internal events like Getstuffy and external events like Block1. As we shall see, an external event may be an internal event of a more comprehensive narrative, e.g. one in which Block1 occurs when Mike is annoyed by cold air coming from Vent1.

We can tell a simple sequential story by first describing S0, e.g. by

  equation193

We can now write the narrative

  equation201

Here tex2html_wrap_inline1113 is like the Rr of [McC95]. It is the result of doing a followed by the occurrence of whatever internal events occur. The assumption is that some sequence of internal events will occur after which the situation remains the same until another external event occurs. tex2html_wrap_inline1113 is undefined in the buzzer example in which internal events occur forever.

tex2html_wrap_inline1121 requires an induction axiom or schema. Here's one candidate:

  equation211

The function tex2html_wrap_inline1123 has the same relation to tex2html_wrap_inline1121 that Next has to Result. It gives the next situation to which no occurrence assertion applies. tex2html_wrap_inline1123 satisfies

  equation218

In the present case we will have

displaymath226

because no internal event will occur in Result(Block1,S0). However, we'll have

  equation229

because now the internal event Getstuffy will occur. Thus we'll have tex2html_wrap_inline1137 but Holds(Stuffy,S2), tex2html_wrap_inline1141 ,
and Holds(Stuffy,S4).

We can write

  equation236

which can also be written

  eqnarray242

Here we extend the meaning of Result to allow a sequence of events as an argument.




next up previous
Next: Telling stories using Occurs Up: ACTIONS AND OTHER EVENTS Previous: Formalizing a buzzer

John McCarthy
Fri Feb 8 17:29:20 PST 2002