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Publications (106)
One of the main goals of Explicit Constructive Logic (ECL) is to provide a constructive formulation of Full (Classical) Higher Order Logic LKw that can be seen as a foundation for knowledge representation. ECL is introduced as a subsystem Zw of LKw. The first order case Z1 and the propositional case Z0 of ECL are examined as well. A comparison of c...
Computational Logic plays a very relevant role in engineering complex systems. It can be used to specify systems at different levels of abstraction. The specifications are executable, thus providing a working prototype for free. Thanks to its well-founded semantics it can be used to reason about the correctness of the specifications, a fundamental...
This is a position paper reporting the motivations, the start-ing point and the guidelines that characterize the MERCURIO 5 project proposal, submitted to MIUR PRIN 2009 6 . The aim is to develop formal models of interactions and of the related support infrastructures, that overcome the limits of the current approaches by explicitly representing no...
An inferential semantics for full Higher Order Logic (HOL) is proposed. The paper presents a constructive notion of model, that being able to capture relevant computational aspects is particularly suited for the applications of HOL to computer science. The inferential semantics is based on the introduction of new abstract deduction structures (ADS)...
In this paper, we describe a framework for specifying, simulating and verifying negotiation protocols following an agent-based approach. Most of the components of this framework have already been implemented and tested, whereas verification facilities using temporal logic, which are the most innovative aspect of this proposal, are being designed at...
This paper describes the theoretic issues and the design of an imple-mented Multiagent System developed by DISI, the Computer Sci-ence Department of the University of Genova, and Ansaldo-STS, the Italian leader in design and construction of signalling and au-tomation systems for conventional and high speed railway lines. The problem discussed in th...
Sketching is a powerful means to represent objects and reason on them. In this paper we describe an integrated environment,
conceived as a multi agent system, that brings together sketch recognition functionalities and decision support facilities.
In this environment, intelligent agents are exploited both for managing the process of recognition of...
Recognizing hand-sketched symbols is a definitely complex problem. The input drawings are often intrinsically ambiguous, and require context to be interpreted in a correct way. Many existing sketch recognition systems avoid this problem by recognizing single segments or simple geometric shapes in a stroke. However, for a recognition system to be ef...
This paper describes an ongoing project that involves DISI, the Computer Science Department of Genova University, and Ansaldo
Segnalamento Ferroviario, the Italian leader in design and construction of signalling and automation systems for railway lines.
We are implementing a multiagent system that monitors processes running in a railway signalling...
This paper describes the outcomes of a project that involved DISI, the Computer Science Department of Genoa Uni-versity, and Ansaldo Segnalamento Ferroviario, the Italian leader in design and construction of signalling and automation systems for conventional and high speed railway lines. The result of the project, started in February 2008 and ended...
This paper describes DCaseLP, a multi-language development envi- ronment for Multi-Agent Systems. DCaseLP provides tools and languages for modelling and implementing a MAS prototype following a set of steps which guide the developer from the late requirement analysis to the prototype imple- mentation. Full support for validating the MAS model by ru...
Parsing hand-drawn diagrams is a definitely complex recognition problem. The input drawings are often intrinsically ambiguous, and require context to be interpreted in a correct way. Many existing sketch recognition systems avoid this problem by recognizing single segments or simple geometric shapes in a stroke. However, for a recognition system to...
To help sharing knowledge in those contexts where documents and services are annotated with semantic information, such as the Semantic Web, defining and implementing the similarity between sets of concepts belonging to a common ontology may prove very useful. In fact, if both the required and the provided pieces of information (be they textual docu...
Many logics for modelling beliefs, desires and intentions of agents, such as Rao and Georgeff's BDI logic and Wooldridge's LORA, are based on temporal logics like CTL/CTL� (Compu- tational Tree Logic) in which the structure of time is branching in the future and linear in the past. Recently, many attempts have been made to define logics for BDI age...
The overall goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical foundations of algorithmic verification techniques for firstorderlinearlogic specifications. The fragment of linear logic we consider in this paper is based on the linear logic programming language called LO (Andreoli and Pareschi, 1990) enriched with universallyquantifiedgoalformulas...
Engineering systems of heterogeneous agents is a difficult task; one of the ways for achieving the successful industrial deployment of agent technology is the development of engineering tools that support the developer in all the steps of design and implementation. In this work we focus on the problem of supporting the design of agent interaction p...
This paperdescribes CaseLP, a logic-based environment for modeling and prototyping Multi-Agent Systems (MASs). CaseLP provides anAgent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodology which guides the MAS developer from the later equirement analysis stagetotheprototypevalidationstage. Ca s e L P alsoofers a setoflanguages and tools both formodeling...
The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents...
The amount of news delivered by newspapers, television news broadcasts and web sites is increasing every day. Users looking
for interesting news spend a lot of time in retrieving and filtering the right news from this massive amount of available
information. For this reason, delivering highly personalized news is becoming more and more important fo...
The overall goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical foundations of algorithmic verification techniques for first order linear logic specifications. The fragment of linear logic we consider in this paper is based on the linear logic programming language called LO enriched with universally quantified goal formulas. Although LO was origin...
Future large-scale software development projects will require engineering support for a diverse range of software quality attributes, such as privacy and openness. It is not feasible to create one monolithic methodology to support all possible quality attributes. Instead, we expect AOSE methodologies to be created and reused in a modular way. A mod...
This document complements the paper [1] by discussing the detailed process of creating and reusing AOSE features. It is not intended as a stand-alone document but should be read as an appendix of [1]. We adopt a software engineering approach and attempt to address issues in the entire lifecycle of the AOSE features. This approach is familiar to ind...
Future large-scale software development projects will require engineering support for a diverse range of software quality attributes, such as privacy and openness. It is not feasible to create one monolithic methodology to support all possible quality attributes. Instead, we expect AOSE methodologies to be created and reused in a modular way. A mod...
In this paper we discuss how to combine a multiview use-case driven method for the requirement specification of a system with an agent-oriented method for developing a working prototype. The rationale behind this combination is to cover the complete software development cycle, while the two methods it originates from only cover a part of it. The pr...
The paper discusses the D-CaseLP multi-agent system (MAS) pro-totyping environment and the software engineering aspects that it helps to face. The target implementation language of agents developed using D-CaseLP is Jess, a language inspired by the CLIPS expert system shell allowing to supply knowl-edge in the form of declarative rules. The choice...
Abstract In this paper we discuss how,to combine,a multiview use-case driven method for the requirement specification of a system with an agent-oriented method,for developing a working prototype. The rationale behind this combination is to cover the complete software development cycle, while the two methods,it originates from only cover a part of i...
This paper presents a linear logic programming language, called O Gammaffi , that gives a complete account of an object-oriented calculus with inheritance and override. This language is best understood as a logical counterpart the object and record extensions of functional programming that have recently been proposed in the literature. From these p...
In this paper we investigate the relationship between Disjunctive Logic Programming as defined in [13] and a subset of Linear Logic, namely the fragment of LinLog [2] which corresponds to Andreoli and Pareschi's LO [3]. We analyze the two languages both from a top-down, operational perspective, and from a bottom-up, semantical one. From a proof-the...
In this paper we investigate the theoretical foundation of a new bottom-up semantics for linear logic programs, and more precisely for the fragment of LinLog (Andreoli, 1992) that consists of the language LO (Andreoli & Pareschi, 1991) enriched with the constant 1. We use constraints to symbolically and finitely represent possibly infinite collecti...
We study the connection between algorithmic techniques for symbolic model checking [ACJT96,FS98,AJ99], and declarative and op- erational aspects of linear logic programming [And92,AP90]. Specifically, we show that the construction used to decide verification problems for Timed Petri Nets [AJ99] can be used to define a new fixpoint semantics for the...
In this paper we investigate the theoretical foundation of a new bottom-up semantics for linear logic programs, and more precisely for the fragment of LinLog that consists of the language LO enriched with the constant 1. We use constraints to symbolically and finitely represent possibly infinite collections of provable goals. We define a fixpoint s...
Agent-based software applications need to incorporate agents having heterogeneous architectures in order for each agent to
optimally perform its task. HEMASL is a simple meta-language used to specify intelligent agents and multiagent systems when
different and heterogeneous agent architectures must be used. HEMASLspecifications are based on an agen...
We study the connection between algorithmic techniques for symbolic model checking [ACJT96, FS98, AJ99], and declarative and operational aspects of linear logic programming [And92, AP90]. Specifically, we show that the construction used to decide verification problems for Timed Petri Nets [AJ99] can be used to define a new fixpoint semantics for th...
In the realization of agent-based applications the developer generally needs to use heterogeneous agent architectures, so that each application component can optimally perform its task. Languages that easily model the heterogeneity of agents' architectures are very useful in the early stages of the application development. This paper presents HEMAS...
. This paper describes CaseLP, a prototyping environment for MultiAgent Systems (MAS), and its adoption for the development of a distributed industrial application. CaseLP employs architecture definition, communication, logic and procedural languages to model a MAS from the top-level architecture down to procedural behavior of each agent's instance...
Integration and reusing of different kinds of information and software tools is a pressing necessity that more and more complex applications have to cope with. This fact and the distributed nature of many applications made it very appealing to use multi-agent technology. However, agent-based software still lacks well founded development methodologi...
The operational semantics of linear logic programming languages is given in terms of goal-driven sequent calculi. The proof-theoretic presentation is the natural counterpart of the top-down semantics of traditional logic programs. In this paper we investigate the theoretical foundation of an alternative operational semantics based on a bottom-up ev...
The operational semantics of linear logic programming languages is given in terms of goal-driven sequent calculi for fragments of the logic. The proof-theoretic presentation is the natural counterpart of the top-down semantics of traditional logic programs. In this paper we investigate the theoretical foundation of an alternative operational semant...
Nowadays software applications are characterized by a great complexity. It arises from the need of reusing existing components and properly integrating them. The distribution of the involved entities and their heterogeneity makes it very useful the adoption of the agent-oriented technology. The paper presents the state-of-the-art of CaseLP, an expe...
. Multi-Agent Systems provide an ideal level of abstraction for modelling complex applications where distributed and heterogeneous entities need to cooperate to achieve a common goal, or to concur for the control of shared resources. This paper proposes a declarative framework for developing multi-agent systems. A formal approach based on Logic Pro...
Several calculi of objects have been studied in the recent literature, that support the central features of object-based languages: messages, inheritance, dynamic dispatch, object update and object-extension. We show that a complete semantic account of these features may be given in a fragment of higher-order linear logic.
In this paper we investigate the relationship between disjunctive logic programming as defined in [9] and a subset of linear logic, namely Andreoli and Pareschi's LO [2]. We analyze the two languages both from a top-down, operational perspective, and from a bottom-up, semantical one. From a proof-theoretical perspective, we show that, modulo a simp...
this paper we present a framework that includes two different ways of applying LP-based technologies to the development of MAS. This is divided into two phases, supported by different specification and programming languages, both of which are based on the LP paradigm. In the preliminary phase, we use a high-level LP language to specify an applicati...
. Forum [36], a powerful logic formalism based on Higher Order Linear Logic, is particularly suited to specify and reason about complex programs and systems. Ehhf [12], a subset of Forum, models many interesting logic programming extensions towards O.O. and concurrent systems and can be viewed as a very high level logic programming specification la...
Applications dealing with railway traffic management have been usually modeled adopting classical technologies such as Operations Research and Constraint Programming. These technologies are suitable to model static situations where the informationis complete, but they lack to cope with the dynamics and uncertainty of freight trains traffic manageme...
The increasing amount of train traffic highlights the necessity of automated tools for decision support, mainly when the availability of tracks is known on a day-by-day basis and no long-term schedules can be made. The paper describes the use of CaseLP, a logic programming based environment for developing multi-agent system prototypes, to face the...
The paper presents CaseLP, a logic-based prototyping environment for specifying and verifying complex distributed applications. CaseLP provides a set of languages for modeling intelligent and interacting components (agents) at different levels of abstraction. It also furnishes tools for integrating legacy software into a prototype. The possibility...
This paper focuses on the use of linear logic as a specification language for the operational
semantics of advanced concepts of programming such as concurrency and
object-orientation. Our approach is based on a refinement of linear logic sequent calculi
based on the proof-theoretic characterization of logic programming. A well-founded
combinati...
The realization of new distributed and heterogeneous software
applications is a challenge that software engineers have to face. Logic
programming and multi-agent systems can play a very effective role in
the rapid prototyping of new software products. This paper proposes a
general approach to the prototyping of complex and distributed
applications...
Applications dealing with railway traffic management have been
usually modeled adopting classical technologies such as Operations
Research and Constraint Programming. These technologies are suitable to
model static situations where the information is complete, but they lack
to cope with the dynamics and uncertainty of freight trains traffic
managem...
The paper presents an ongoing research project that uses Logic Programming, Linear Logic Programming, and their related techniques for executable specifications and rapid prototyping of Multi-Agent Systems. The MAS paradigm is an extremely rich one and we believe that Logic Programming will play a very effective role in this area, both as a tool fo...
This document presents a progress report for the thesis work and it is structured as follows. First, we recall motivation and context of the research work. Then, we illustrate some motivated variations and restrictions of the main goals and work plan presented in the thesis proposal [23]. The new work plan is then evaluated with respect to the achi...
The paper is a general overview of an approach to the semantics of logic programs whose aim is finding notions of models which really capture the operational semantics, and are therefore useful for defining program equivalences and for semantics-based program analysis. The approach leads to the introduction of extended interpretations which are mor...
More and more complex applications need to cope with the integration of different kinds of information, the reuse of existing software, the integration of well established tools and systems (such as databases). This and the distributed nature of many applications made it very appealing to use multi-agent technology. Rapid prototyping and executable...
The goal of the thesis is the definition of a specification environment for Complex Distributed Software Applications. More precisely, the aim is to investigate all the issues connected to the realization of executable specifications for such applications, using new technologies rising in the fields of Logic Programming, Multi--Agent Systems and Di...
In this paper we develop a new approach providing a smooth integration of extensional updates and declarative query language for deductive databases. The approach is based on a declarative speciication of updates in rule bodies. Updates are not executed as soon are evaluated. Instead, they are collected and then applied to the database when the que...
In this paper we show how multi-theory logic programming techniques can be profitably applied to the realization of multi-agent systems which solve complex problems. Our goal is to use logic programming as a tool to give an executable specification of a multi-agent system, obtained from a high-level informal description of the interactions among th...
Girard's linear logic [18] provides powerful means for studying state transformationsand resource consumption in computations within a completely logical framework.The starting point of this work is Forum [22, 23], a presentation of higher orderlinear logic which is an abstract logic programming language[24], i.e., complete withrespect to uniform p...
. This paper presents a linear logic programming language, called O Gammaffi , that gives a complete and logically sound account of an object calculus with inheritance and override. This language can be seen as the logic programming counterpart of recent proposals of -calculi of objects [1, 6]. Our main interest in this study is in investigating th...
Deductive databases with updates in rule bodies do not allow bottom-up execution model. This is due to the introduction of control in rule bodies. However, bottom-up execution models are very important due to the set oriented queryanswering process of database systems. In [4] we have proposed a rule language to avoid the above drawback and to provi...
We propose a new negation rule for logic programming which derives existentially closed negative literals, and we define a version of completion for which this rule is sound and complete. The rule is called ''Negation As Instantiation'' (NAI). According to it, a negated atom succeeds whenever all the branches of the SLD-tree for the atom either fai...
The notions of uniform proof and of resolution represent the foundations of the proof-theoretic characterization of logic programming. The class of Abstract Logic Programming Languages nicely captures these concepts for a wide spectrum of logical systems. In the logic programming setting, however, the structure of the formulas, e.g. Horn clauses an...
Logic Programming Language [13] defined by Miller in [14]. In [4], F&O, a sub-language of Forum, has been defined in order the identify a subset of linear logic formulas close to the hereditary Harrop ones of Intuitionistic Logic. They enrich usual Horn clauses allowing occurrences of linear connectives in a controlled way both in the head and in t...
A logical characterization of the typical features of object-oriented languages could yield a clear semantical counterpart of their operational meaning and, at the same time, it could allow to define a logic programming language in which it is possible to reason over highly-complex data structures. Many approaches to this problem have been proposed...
In this paper we define a new notion or truth on Herbrand interpretations extended with variables which allows us to capture, by means of suitable models, various observable properties, such as the ground success set, the set of atomic consequences, and the computed answer substitutions. The notion of truth extends the classical one to account for...
The paper is a general overview of our approach to the semantics of logic programs. We introduce new notions and modify the classical semantics, i.e. we use new tools to model those logic programs aspects which really capture their operational semantics, and are therefore useful for defining program equivalences and for semantics-based program anal...
In this paper we propose a logic-based language, CLP
\((\mathcal{A}\mathcal{D})\) which is an instance of the Constraint Logic Programming schema and is a convenient semantic framework to be used for deductive database language with updates. CLP
\((\mathcal{A}\mathcal{D})\) can be seen as an extension of Datalog with base relations updates and the...
This paper addresses the problem of integrating the update language into a declarative query language. Elementary updates are expressed in a declarative style by means of a constraint language. The constraint logic programming framework is used to provide a declarative query-update language. Its semantics is defined in two steps. In such framework...
The paper presents a new approach to the problem of completeness of the SLDNF-resolution. We propose a different reference
theory that we call strict completion. This new concept of completion (comp*(P)) is based on a program transformation that given any program transforms it into a strict one (with the same computational
behaviour) and the usual...
The introduction of negation in logic programming using the negation as failure rule causes some problems regarding the completeness of the SLDNF-resolution proof procedure. One of the causes of incompleteness arises when evaluating a nonground negative literal. This is solved by forbidding these evaluations. Obviously, there is the possibility of...
The paper defines a new declarative semantics for logic programs, which is based on interpretations containing (possibly) non-ground atoms. Two different interpretations are introduced and the corresponding models are defined and compared. The classical results on the Herbrand model semantics of logic programs are shown to hold in the new models to...
The paper defines a new declarative semantics for logic programs, which is based on interpretations containing (possibly) non-ground atoms. Two different interpretations are introduced and the corresponding models are defined and compared. The classical results on the Herbrand model semantics of logic programs are shown to hold in the new models to...
A complete implementation of the negation as failure rule in a logic programming system requires that only ground negative literals are selected during the evaluation. Obviously there is the possibility to have only non-ground negative literals in the goal (the floundering of the goal). A powerful logic programming environment should provide a tool...
An extension of the class of logic programs for which the Negation as Failure rule is equivalent to the Closed World Assumption
is presented. This extension includes programs on infinite domains and with recursive definitions. For this class of programs
with ground (positive or negative) queries the Query Evaluation Process is complete. A character...