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First-Order Temporal Verification in Practice

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Abstract

First-order temporal logic, the extension of first-order logic with operators dealing with time, is a powerful and expressive formalism with many potential applications. This expressive logic can be viewed as a framework in which to investigate problems specified in other logics. The monodic fragment of first-order temporal logic is a useful fragment that possesses good computational properties such as completeness and sometimes even decidability. Temporal logics of knowledge are useful for dealing with situations where the knowledge of agents in a system is involved. In this paper we present a translation from temporal logics of knowledge into the monodic fragment of first-order temporal logic. We can then use a theorem prover for monodic first-order temporal logic to prove properties of the translated formulas. This allows problems specified in temporal logics of knowledge to be verified automatically without needing a specialized theorem prover for temporal logics of knowledge. We present the translation, its correctness, and examples of its use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, United Kingdom

    M. C. Fernández-Gago, U. Hustadt, C. Dixon, M. Fisher & B. Konev

Authors
  1. M. C. Fernández-Gago
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  2. U. Hustadt
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  3. C. Dixon
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  4. M. Fisher
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  5. B. Konev
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. C. Fernández-Gago.

Additional information

Partially supported by EPSRC project: Analysis and Mechanisation of Decidable First-Order Temporal Logics (GR/R45376/01).

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Fernández-Gago, M.C., Hustadt, U., Dixon, C. et al. First-Order Temporal Verification in Practice. J Autom Reasoning 34, 295–321 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-005-7354-1

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