Encoding Solutions of the Frame Problem in Dynamic Logic

In classical deterministic planning, solutions to planning tasks are simply sequences of actions, but that is not sufficient for contingent plans in non-deterministic environments. Contingent plans are often expressed through policies that map states to actions. An alternative is to specify contingent plans as programs, e.g. in the syntax of Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL). PDL is a logic for reasoning about programs with sequential composition, test and non-deterministic choice. However, as we show in the paper, none of the existing PDL modalities directly captures the notion of a solution to a planning task under non-determinism. We add a new modality to star-free PDL correctly capturing this notion. We prove the appropriateness of the new modality by showing how to translate back and forth between policies and PDL programs under the new modality. More precisely, we show how a policy solution to a planning task gives rise to a program solution expressed via the new modality, and vice versa. We also provide an axiomatisation of our PDL extension through reduction axioms into standard star-free PDL.

Description logics provide powerful languages for representing and reasoning about knowledge of static application domains. The main strength of description logics is that they offer considerable expressive power going far beyond propositional logic, while reasoning is still decidable. There is a demand to bring the power and character of description logics into the description and reasoning of dynamic application domains which are characterized by actions. In this paper, based on a combination of the propositional dynamic logic PDL, a family of description logics and an action formalism constructed over description logics, we propose a family of dynamic description logics DDL(X @) for representing and reasoning about actions, where X represents well-studied description logics ranging from the to the , and X @ denotes the extension of X with the @ constructor. The representation power of DDL(X @) is reflected in four aspects. Firstly, the static knowledge of application domains is represented as RBoxes and acyclic TBoxes of the description logic X. Secondly, the states of the world and the pre-conditions of atomic actions are described by ABox assertions of the description logic X @, and the post-conditions of atomic actions are described by primitive literals of X @. Thirdly, starting with atomic actions and ABox assertions of X @, complex actions are constructed with regular program constructors of PDL, so that various control structures on actions such as the "Sequence", "Choice", "Any-Order", "Iterate", "If-Then-Else", "Repeat-While" and "Repeat-Until" can be represented. Finally, both atomic actions and complex actions are used as modal operators for the construction of formulas, so that many properties on actions can be explicitly stated by formulas. A tableau-algorithm is provided for deciding the satisfiability of DDL(X @)-formulas; based on this algorithm, reasoning tasks such as the realizability, executability and projection of actions can be effectively carried out. As a result, DDL(X @) not only offers considerable expressive power going beyond many action formalisms which are propositional, but also provides decidable reasoning services for actions described by it.

Propositional dynamic logic with local assignment

Dynamic logic is a powerful framework for reasoning about imperative programs. An extension with a concurrent operator, called concurrent propositional dynamic logic (CPDL) [20], was introduced to formalise programs running in parallel. In a different direction, other authors proposed a systematic method for generating multi-valued propositional dynamic logics to reason about weighted programs [15]. This paper presents the first step of combining these two frameworks to introduce uncertainty in concurrent computations. In the proposed framework, a weight is assigned to each branch of the parallel execution, resulting in a (possible) asymmetric parallelism, inherent to the fuzzy programming paradigm [2, 23]. By adopting such an approach, a family of logics is obtained, called multi-valued concurrent propositional dynamic logics (\(\mathcal {GCDL}(\mathbf {A})\)), parametric on an action lattice \(\mathbf {A}\) specifying a notion of “weight” assigned to program execution. Additionally, the validity of some axioms of CPDL is discussed in the new family of generated logics.

In its many guises and variations, propositional dynamic logic (PDL) plays an important role in various areas of computer science such as databases, artificial intelligence, and computer linguistics. One relevant and powerful variation is ICPDL, the extension of PDL with intersection and converse. Although ICPDL has several interesting applications, its computational properties have never been investigated. In this paper, we prove that ICPDL is decidable by developing a translation to the monadic second order logic of infinite trees. Our result has applications in information logic, description logic, and epistemic logic. In particular, we solve a long-standing open problem in information logic. Another virtue of our approach is that it provides a decidability proof that is more transparent than existing ones for PDL with intersection (but without converse).

Dynamic linear time temporal logic

Modal logic becomes action logic by adding programs as in propositional dynamic logic or the /spl mu/-calculus. Modal languages can be seen as decidable fragments of first-order logic that admit a natural bisimulation, and hence enjoy a good model theory. Recently, much stronger 'guarded fragments' of first-order logic have been identified that enjoy the same pleasant features. The latter can serve as richer action languages as well. We will develop the logic of guarded fragments as a form of process theory. In particular, moving from sequential to parallel process operations correlates with moving to first-order fragments that are close to, or perhaps just over the decidable-undecidable fence.

Propositional dynamic logic of nonregular programs

Determinism and non-determinism in PDL

It is an open problem whether definability in Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL) on forests is decidable. Based on an algebraic characterization by Boja\'nczyk, et. al.,(2012) in terms of forest algebras, Straubing (2013) described an approach to PDL based on a k-fold iterated distributive law. A proof that all languages satisfying such a k-fold iterated distributive law are in PDL would settle decidability of PDL. We solve this problem in the case k=2: All languages recognized by forest algebras satisfying a 2-fold iterated distributive law are in PDL. Furthermore, we show that this class is decidable. This provides a novel nontrivial decidable subclass of PDL, and demonstrates the viability of the proposed approach to deciding PDL in general.

A novel four-phase dynamic CMOS logic is proposed, analysed and chip-tested. There are two circuit configurations in the new dynamic logic. One of these can completely get rid of the problems of charge sharing and clock skew, which are inherent in most of the dynamic circuits. The other, although it can only prevent the charge sharing problem, has a larger tolerance of the clock skew than the conventional four-phase precharge-discharge logic. The second configuration is more flexible in logic design than the first configuration. Both configurations use only three clock phases to form the four-phase dynamic circuits. After a brief analysis of the clock skew problem of the conventional four-phase logic, the new dynamic logic is introduced and the two circuit configurations are described. Then, the basic analysis on the device size design and performance evaluations of the new logic are given. A serial full adder was designed and implemented by a 3.5 /jm p-well CMOS process and the experimental results obtai...

Deterministic process logic is elementary

In this paper we attempt to shed light on the concept of an agent’s knowledge after a non-deterministic action is executed. We start by making a comparison between notions of non-deterministic choice, and between notions of sequential composition, of settings with dynamic and/or epistemic character; namely Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL), Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL), and the more recent logic of Semi-Public Environments (SPE). These logics represent two different approaches for defining the aforementioned actions, and in order to provide unified frameworks that encompass both, we define the logics DELVO (DEL+Vision+Ontic change) and PDLVE (PDL+Vision+Epistemic operators). DELVO is given a sound and complete axiomatisation.

The completeness proofs for Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL) in the literature are non-constructive and usually presented in an informal manner. We obtain a formal and constructive completeness proof for Converse PDL by recasting a completeness proof by Kozen and Parikh into our constructive setting. We base our proof on a Pratt-style decision method for satisfiability constructing finite models for satisfiable formulas and pruning refutations for unsatisfiable formulas. Completeness of Segerberg's axiomatization of PDL is then obtained by translating pruning refutations to derivations in the Hilbert system. We first treat PDL without converse and then extend the proofs to Converse PDL. All results are formalized in Coq/Ssreflect.

Dynamic epistemic logic (\(\mathbf {DEL}\)) is known as a large family of logics that extend standard epistemic logic with dynamic operators. Such dynamic operators can be regarded as epistemic actions over Kripke semantics (or its variant). Therefore, \(\mathbf {DEL}\) is often used to model changes of agents’ knowledge, belief or preference over Kripke semantics in terms of dynamic operators in many literatures. As a variant of \(\mathbf {DEL}\), (van Benthem and Liu, J Appl Non-Classical Logics 17(2):157–18 2007; Liu, Reasoning about preference dynamics, Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin 2011) proposed dynamic logic of relation changers (\(\mathbf {DLRC}\)). They provided a general framework to capture many dynamic operators in terms of relation changing operation written in programs of propositional dynamic logic, and they also provided a sound and complete Hilbert-style axiomatization for \(\mathbf {DLRC}\). While \(\mathbf {DLRC}\) can cover many dynamic operators in a uniform manner, proof theory for \(\mathbf {DLRC}\) is not well-studied except the Hilbert-style axiomatization. Therefore, we propose a cut-free labelled sequent calculus for \(\mathbf {DLRC}\). We show that our sequent calculus is equipollent with the Hilbert-style axiomatization.