A Formal Theory Of Knowledge and Action

Abstract

Most work on planning and problem solving within the field of artificial intelligence assumes that the agent has complete knowledge of all relevant aspects of the problem domain and problem situation. In the real world, however, planning and acting must frequently be performed without complete knowledge. This imposes two additional burdens on an intelligent agent trying to act effectively. First, when the agent entertains a plan for achieving some goal, he must consider not only whether the physical prerequisites of the plan have been satisfied, but also whether he has all the information necessary to carry out the plan. Second, he must be able to reason about what he can do to obtain necessary information that he lacks. In this paper, we present a theory of action in which these problems are taken into account, showing how to formalize both the knowledge prerequisites of action and the effects of action on knowledge.