Reasoning about actions with EL ontologies with temporal answer sets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method using Answer Set Programming to reason about actions within ontologies expressed in EL^ot, incorporating temporal dynamics and non-determinism, ensuring consistency through polynomial encodings.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach combining temporal answer sets with EL^ot ontologies for reasoning about actions, including non-determinism and causal rules.

Findings

Polynomial encoding guarantees action consistency with ontologies.

Framework handles non-deterministic actions and causal ramifications.

Provides conditions for ensuring consistency in temporal action theories.

Abstract

We propose an approach based on Answer Set Programming for reasoning about actions with domain descriptions including ontological knowledge, expressed in the lightweight description logic EL^\bot. We consider a temporal action theory, which allows for non-deterministic actions and causal rules to deal with ramifications, and whose extensions are defined by temporal answer sets. We provide conditions under which action consistency can be guaranteed with respect to an ontology, by a polynomial encoding of an action theory extended with an EL^\bot knowledge base (in normal form) into a temporal action theory.