Temporal Model-Based Diagnosis: An Overview From an Abductive Perspective

In this paper we present an extension of the spectrum of logical definitions of model-based diagnosis introduced in [8]. The extended spectrum considers the case of temporal model-based diagnosis. We distinguish between different temporal phenomena that can be taken into account in diagnosis and we introduce a modeling language which can capture all such phenomena. We then introduce a general characterization of the notions of diagnostic problem and explanation, showing that in the temporal case the spectrum of alternative definitions has two dimensions: the notion of logical explanation being adopted (i.e., consistency vs. entailment, as in consistency-based and abductive approaches to atemporal diagnosis) and the notion of temporal explanation (i.e., requiring that the temporal information on the observation is consistent with or entailed by that in the part of the model used for explaining the observations). In the paper we analyse the various alternatives in the spectrum and we sho..