Knowledge in Action: Logical Foundations for Specifying and Implementing Dynamical Systems [Hardcover]

Raymond Reiter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Modeling and implementing dynamical systems is a central problem in artificial intelligence, robotics, software agents, simulation, decision and control theory, and many other disciplines. In recent years, a new approach to representing such systems, grounded in mathematical logic, has been developed within the AI knowledge-representation community.This book presents a comprehensive treatment of these ideas, basing its theoretical and implementation foundations on the situation calculus, a dialect of first-order logic. Within this framework, it develops many features of dynamical systems modeling, including time, processes, concurrency, exogenous events, reactivity, sensing and knowledge, probabilistic uncertainty, and decision theory. It also describes and implements a new family of high-level programming languages suitable for writing control programs for dynamical systems. Finally, it includes situation calculus specifications for a wide range of examples drawn from cognitive robotics, planning, simulation, databases, and decision theory, together with all the implementation code for these examples. This code is available on the book's Web site.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Human cognition sparkles brightest in the theatre of communication. This book takes you there the 'Edinburgh Way': that is, with a sound mix of psychology, logic, linguistics, computer science, and always-lively philosophical debate."--Johan van Benthem, University of Amsterdam

"This book is a masterful integration of several decades of work on first-order logic, situation calculus, logic programming, and semantics of time and knowledge. The result is a unified, well-thought-out, and systematic approach to dynamical systems that spans much of modern computer science and AI."--Johan van Benthem, University of Amsterdam

"This book describes a thoroughly developed logic- and situation-calculus-based system for problem solving and planning. Its emphasis on theory is especially important for the ambitious student who wants to look beyond immediate applications toward the goal of human-level artificial intelligence."--John McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Stanford University

"This outstanding work should be on the shelf of anyone concerned with logical control of physical processes."--Anil Nerode, Goldwin Smith Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University

About the Author

Raymond Reiter is Professor and Co-Director of the Cognitive Robotics Project in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262182181
• ISBN-13: 978-0262182188
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,079,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for everyone interested in AI or philosophy, June 29, 2004

By 

Randall Helzerman (campbell, ca) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Knowledge in Action: Logical Foundations for Specifying and Implementing Dynamical Systems (Hardcover)

It is rare that a book appears which presents a solution to a major outstanding problem. It is even rarer when a book presents a solution which is both theoretically sound and undeniably practical. But this is such a book. The frame problem, which went unnoticed for the first 70 years of logic, and unsolved for the next 30, here gets a solution.

This book is the distillation of Reiter's lifeswork. Unlike many other such books, however, it is not a mere cut-n-paste of conference papers and tech reports. Instead of being a pastiche, it is rather a continuous, sustained argument, persuasively and clearly presented. A masterpiece.

There is something here to infuriate everybody. Those who think that AI shouldn't be using logic-based methods will be infuriated because Reiter has here, for the first time, made them work. Those who think that first-order logic is the only true logic will be infuriated, because Reiter shows how 2nd order logic is key. Those who think that AI is too theoretical will be infuriated because this is a practical book. Those who think that AI shouldn't worry about being practical will be infuriated, because Reiter has shown that the best theory leads to the most practical solution. Those who are LISP fans will be infuriated because his methods lead inexorably to PROLOG. Read the book, be infuriated by it, and humbly learn from it. The master speaks.

If you've made it to this web page or this far in the review, you have to buy and read this book :-)