Reasoning for Moving Blocks Problem: Formal Representation and Implementation

TL;DR

This paper presents a formal approach combining qualitative reasoning and probabilistic functions to represent uncertain knowledge for the moving blocks task, implemented in Prolog and tested in simulation.

Contribution

It introduces a formalization of commonsense knowledge using Situation Calculus for reasoning about uncertain, qualitative information in robotic block-moving tasks.

Findings

Successfully solved block-moving tasks in simulation

Demonstrated the effectiveness of formal knowledge representation

Implemented reasoning system in Prolog

Abstract

The combined approach of the Qualitative Reasoning and Probabilistic Functions for the knowledge representation is proposed. The method aims at represent uncertain, qualitative knowledge that is essential for the moving blocks task's execution. The attempt to formalize the commonsense knowledge is performed with the Situation Calculus language for reasoning and robot's beliefs representation. The method is implemented in the Prolog programming language and tested for a specific simulated scenario. In most cases the implementation enables us to solve a given task, i.e., move blocks to desired positions. The example of robot's reasoning and main parts of the implemented program's code are presented.