Keeping an up-to-date consistent belief set by querying the belief database with explicit timestamps
Annerieke Heuvelink · TNO Repository · 2006
A new approach for a BDI agent to form a consistent belief set about the current state of itself and the world is introduced. The approach does not use standard beliefrevision or updating mechanisms, instead it proposes the explicit posting of base facts as beliefs with a time stamp into a database. This database can later be queried to abstract the current beliefs concerning explicit knowledge (the base facts) as well as implicit knowledge (information formed out of other beliefs by deduction rules),both with a certainty factor attached. The benefits of this approach are that no information is lost and that many cognitive plausible processes can be modeled uponthe database. Taking into account that humans reason about their beliefs and depending on the kind of beliefs use different methods to choose among them when they are inconsistent, we suggest the use of various (including domain specific instantiations of) reasoning rules. We illustrate our approach within the domain of naval warfare.