Physical Reasoning in an Open World
This addresses the challenge of open-world reasoning in AI and cognitive science, which is incremental as it builds on existing closed-world approaches.
The paper tackles the problem of physical reasoning with incomplete information by implementing an open-world reasoner in Prolog for a container microworld, enabling valid conclusions from very incomplete specifications.
Most work on physical reasoning, both in artificial intelligence and in cognitive science, has focused on closed-world reasoning, in which it is assumed that the problem specification specifies all relevant objects and substance, all their relations in an initial situation, and all exogenous events. However, in many situations, it is important to do open-world reasoning; that is, making valid conclusions from very incomplete information. We have implemented in Prolog an open-world reasoner for a toy microworld of containers that can be loaded, unloaded, sealed, unsealed, carried, and dumped.