Tech Reports

ULCS-03-005

Towards the Implementation of First-Order Temporal Resolution: The Expanding Domain Case

Boris Konev, Anatoli Degtyarev, Clare Dixon, Michael Fisher and Ullrich Hustadt

Abstract

First-order temporal logic is a concise and powerful notation, with many potential applications in both Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. While the full logic is highly complex, recent work on monodic first-order temporal logics has identified important enumerable and even decidable fragments. In this paper, we develop a clausal resolution method for the monodic fragment of first-order temporal logic over expanding domains. We first define a normal form for monodic formulae and show how arbitrary monodic formulae can be translated into the normal form, while preserving satisfiability. We then introduce novel resolution calculi that can be applied to formulae in this normal form and state correctness and completeness results for the method. We illustrate the method on a comprehensive example. The method is based on classical first-order resolution and can, thus, be efficiently implemented.

For each technical report listed here, copyright and all intellectual property rights remain with the respective authors. Copyright is effective from the year of publication in each case. By downloading a file from this page, you agree to use it only for purposes of research and scholarship. Any other use of this material or storage of it in any medium or its sale or distribution in any form is expressly forbidden without prior written permission from the authors concerned.