Representing action: indeterminacy and ramifications

AbstractWe define and study a high-level language for describing actions, more expressive than the action language A introduced by Gelfond and Lifschitz. The new language, AR, allows us to describe actions with indirect effects (ramifications), nondeterministic actions, and actions that may be impossible to execute. It has symbols for nonpropositional fluents and for the fluents that are exempt from the commonsense law of inertia. Temporal projection problems specified using the language AR can be represented as nested abnormality theories based on the situation calculus