Abstract
Modelling substances in knowledge representation has to be different from the treatment of discrete objects. For example liquids need a different approach to individuation. We propose an ontology which represents physical states and other properties of substances in a uniform way. Based on this we describe how to model a hierarchy of actions that can deal with such substances. For these actions a general distinction is made with respect to the type of properties the actions are changing. Further we describe an implementation in description logic allowing especially the definition of actions by specialization of more abstract actions and the inheritance of pre- and postconditions.
Part of this author’s contribution was funded by a PhD scholarschip of the program “Graduiertenförderung des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt“.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alessandro Artale and Enrico Franconi. A temporal description logic for reasoning about action and plans.In Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 1997.
J. Bateman, R. Kasper, J. Moore, and R. Whitney. A general organization of knowledge for natural language processing: the penman upper model. Technical report, USC/ISI, 1990.
Robert Dale. Generating Referring Expressions, Constructing Descriptions in a Domain of Objects and Processes. MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992.
Premkumar T. Devanbu and Diane J. Litman. Plan-based terminological reasoning. In J. F. Doyle, R. Files, and Erik Sandewall, editors, Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Proceedings of the Second International Conference (KR’ 91), pages 128–138, Cambridge, MA, April 1991. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA.
Richard E. Fikes and Nils J. Nilsson. STRIPS: A new approach to the application of theorem proving to problem solving. Artificial Inteligence, 2(3–4):189–208, 1971.
Michael R. Genesereth and Richard E. Fikes. Knowledge Interchange Format, V. 3.0, Reference Manual. Stanford University, June 1992.
Thomas R. Gruber. Towards principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 43:907–928, 5/6 1995. Also available as Technical Report KSL 93-04, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University.
Patrick J. Hayes. Formal theories of the commensense world, chapter Naive physics I: Ontology for Liquids, pages 71–107. Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1985.
J. Heinsohn, D. Kudenko, B. Nebel, and H. Profitlich. RAT: representation of actions using terminological logics. Technical report, DFKI, Saarbrücken, 1992.
Thorsten Liebig and Dietmar Röosner. Action hierarchies for the automatic generation of multilingual technical documents. In Rémi Zajac, editor, IJCAI-97 Workshop Ontologies and Multilingual NLP, Nagoya, Japan, August 1997.International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
Robert M. MacGregor. A description classiffer for the predicate calculus. In Proceedings of the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 213–230, 1994.
Bertrand Meyer. Object-oriented Software Construction. Prentice Hall, New York, 1988.
Natalya Fridman Noy and Carole D. Hafner. Representing Scientific experiments: Implications for Ontology Design and Knowledge Sharing. In 15th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI98), Madison Wisconsin, July 1998. AAAI Press.
Francis Jeffry Pelletier and Lenhart K. Schubert. Handbook of philosophical logic, chapter Mass Expressions, pages 327–407. D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1989.
Stuart Russel and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, pages 241–243. Prentice Hall, 1995.
Paolo Terenziani. Towards a causal ontology coping with the temporal constraints between causes and effects. International Journal for Human-Computer Studies, 43(5/6):847–863, 1995.
Paul E. van der Vet, Piet-Hein Speel, and Nicolaas J. I. Mars. The plinius ontology of ceramic materials. Workshop Notes ECAI’94 in Amsterdam, Workshop Comparison of Implemented Ontologies, pages 187–205, 1994.
W. Wahlster, E. André, S. Bandyopadhyay, W. Graf, and T. Rist. WIP: The Coordinated Generation of Multimodal Presentations from a Common Representation. In A. Ortony, J. Slack, and O. Stock, editors, Communication from an Artificial Intelligence Perspective: Theoretical and Applied Issues, pages 121–144. Springer-Verlag, New York, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1992.
Lars Webel. Modellierung eines Teilgebiets der Domäne Werkstoé für technische Produkte und Implementation in LOOM. Technical report, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Institut für Informations-und Kommunikationssysteme, 1997.
L. Webel. Untersuchungen zur Modellierung von Substanzen. Diplomarbeit, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, 1998.
R. Weida and D. Litman. Terminological reasoning with constraint networks and an application to plan recognition. In Nebel, Swartout, and Rich, editors, Proceedings of Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR’92), 1992.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag
About this paper
Cite this paper
Höfling, B., Liebig, T., Rösner, D., Webel, L. (1999). Towards an Ontology for Substances and Related Actions. In: Fensel, D., Studer, R. (eds) Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management. EKAW 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1621. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48775-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48775-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66044-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48775-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive