Decision-making and problem-solving methods in automation technology

The state of the art in the automation of decision making and problem solving is reviewed. The information upon which the report is based was derived from literature searches, visits to university and government laboratories performing basic research in the area, and a 1980 Langley Research Center sponsored conferences on the subject. It is the contention of the authors that the technology in this area is being generated by research primarily in the three disciplines of Artificial Intelligence, Control Theory, and Operations Research. Under the assumption that the state of the art in decision making and problem solving is reflected in the problems being solved, specific problems and methods of their solution are often discussed to elucidate particular aspects of the subject. Synopses of the following major topic areas comprise most of the report: (1) detection and recognition; (2) planning; and scheduling; (3) learning; (4) theorem proving; (5) distributed systems; (6) knowledge bases; (7) search; (8) heuristics; and (9) evolutionary programming

Database Constraint Enforcement: A Decompositional Approach.

This thesis presents an efficient and integrated approach to integrity constraint checking for advanced database systems. The proposed approach essentially consists of three phases: constraint decomposition, global enforcement strategy and local enforcement tuning. The central theme of this dissertation is the development of constraint decomposition theory, which can be used to decompose each constraint formula into a set of constraint sub-formulas. The constraint sub-formulas derived from the decomposition satisfy the sufficient conditions imposed by the original constraint and are also much simpler and more efficient to check. The decomposition is done only once for each constraint, at the time of its definition. The global enforcement strategies, with the application of decomposition theory, are studied in both sequential and parallel environments. The physical characteristics of the database state is used to determine the checking order or to make assignment of constraint sub-formulas to processing elements. It is shown that the performance of constraint enforcement, with the application of the decomposition theory, is much better than that without the application of the decomposition theory. Local enforcement tuning methods are developed to further simplify each constraint sub-formula derived at constraint decomposition phase. Because of the simplicity of constraint sub-formulas, more efficient and simple methods can be used. Furthermore, more information, such as update types and update data, are available for the purpose of simplification. The fundamental assumption underlying our approach is that most database updates satisfy integrity constaints. A second assumption is that transactions are localized and database updates are nonuniform in their distribution. Based on these assumptions, the proposed approach will achieve a significant performance increase over previous approaches

On the foundations of paraconsistent logic programming

Orientador: Marcelo Esteban ConiglioDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias HumanasResumo: A Programação Lógica nasce da interação entre a Lógica e os fundamentos da Ciência da Computação: teorias de primeira ordem podem ser interpretadas como programas de computador. A Programação Lógica tem sido extensamente utilizada em ramos da Inteligência Artificial tais como Representação do Conhecimento e Raciocínio de Senso Comum. Esta aproximação deu origem a uma extensa pesquisa com a intenção de definir sistemas de Programação Lógica paraconsistentes, isto é, sistemas nos quais seja possível manipular informação contraditória. Porém, todas as abordagens existentes carecem de uma fundamentação lógica claramente definida, como a encontrada na programação lógica clássica. A questão básica é saber quais são as lógicas paraconsistentes subjacentes a estas abordagens. A presente dissertação tem como objetivo estabelecer uma fundamentação lógica e conceitual clara e sólida para o desenvolvimento de sistemas bem fundados de Programação Lógica Paraconsistente. Nesse sentido, este trabalho pode ser considerado como a primeira (e bem sucedida) etapa de um ambicioso programa de pesquisa. Uma das teses principais da presente dissertação é que as Lógicas da Inconsistência Formal (LFI's), que abrangem uma enorme família de lógicas paraconsistentes, proporcionam tal base lógica. Como primeiro passo rumo à definição de uma programação lógica genuinamente paraconsistente, demonstramos nesta dissertação uma versão simplificada do Teorema de Herbrand para uma LFI de primeira ordem. Tal teorema garante a existência, em princípio, de métodos de dedução automática para as lógicas (quantificadas) em que o teorema vale. Um pré-requisito fundamental para a definição da programação lógica é justamente a existência de métodos de dedução automática. Adicionalmente, para a demonstração do Teorema de Herbrand, são formuladas aqui duas LFI's quantificadas através de sequentes, e para uma delas demonstramos o teorema da eliminação do corte. Apresentamos também, como requisito indispensável para os resultados acima mencionados, uma nova prova de correção e completude para LFI's quantificadas na qual mostramos a necessidade de exigir o Lema da Substituição para a sua semânticaAbstract: Logic Programming arises from the interaction between Logic and the Foundations of Computer Science: first-order theories can be seen as computer programs. Logic Programming have been broadly used in some branches of Artificial Intelligence such as Knowledge Representation and Commonsense Reasoning. From this, a wide research activity has been developed in order to define paraconsistent Logic Programming systems, that is, systems in which it is possible to deal with contradictory information. However, no such existing approaches has a clear logical basis. The basic question is to know what are the paraconsistent logics underlying such approaches. The present dissertation aims to establish a clear and solid conceptual and logical basis for developing well-founded systems of Paraconsistent Logic Programming. In that sense, this text can be considered as the first (and successful) stage of an ambitious research programme. One of the main thesis of the present dissertation is that the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFI's), which encompasses a broad family of paraconsistent logics, provide such a logical basis. As a first step towards the definition of genuine paraconsistent logic programming we shown, in this dissertation, a simplified version of the Herbrand Theorem for a first-order LFI. Such theorem guarantees the existence, in principle, of automated deduction methods for the (quantified) logics in which the theorem holds, a fundamental prerequisite for the definition of logic programming over such logics. Additionally, in order to prove the Herbrand Theorem we introduce sequent calculi for two quantified LFI's, and cut-elimination is proved for one of the systems. We also present, as an indispensable requisite for the above mentioned results, a new proof of soundness and completeness for first-order LFI's in which we show the necessity of requiring the Substitution Lemma for the respective semanticsMestradoFilosofiaMestre em Filosofi