Progressing basic action theories with non-local effect actions
Stavros Vassos, Sebastian Sardiña, Hector J. Levesque · IRIS Research product catalog (Sapienza University of Rome) · 2009
In this paper we propose a practical extension to some re-cent work on the progression of action theories in the situ-ation calculus. In particular, we argue that the assumption of local-effect actions is too restrictive for realistic settings. Based on the notion of safe-range queries from database the-ory and just-in-time action histories, we present a new type of action theory, called range-restricted, that allows actions to have non-local effects with a restricted range. These theories can represent incomplete information in the initial database in terms of possible closures for fluents and can be progressed by directly updating the database in an algorithmic manner. We prove the correctness of our method and argue for the ap-plicability of range-restricted theories in realistic settings.