Challenges for Action Theories

Book excerpt: A logic-based approach to the design of computing systems would, undoubtedly, offer many advantages over the imperative paradigm most commonly applied so far for programming and hardware design and, consequently, logic, again and again, has been heralded as the basis for the next generation of computer systems. While logic and formal methods are indeed gaining ground in many areas of computer science and artificial intelligence the expected revolution has not yet happened. In this book the author offers a convincing solution to the ramification problem and qualification problem associated with the frame problem and thus contributes to a satisfactory solution of the core problem and related challenges. Thielscher bases his approach on the fluent calculus, a first-order Prolog-like formalism allowing for the description of actions and change.