Course Introduction: An action normally changes the state of the world. For example, the action of `short-circuiting' may blow up a fuse; the action of a `ligand coming in contact with a cell membrane' may change the state of many elements inside the cell; the action of `buying a ticket' changes the state of the availability of tickets; etc. More general actions such as `sensing' or `testing' often change the state of the knowledge of the agent doing the action with or without changing the state of the world. Representing actions, reasoning about their impact on the world and/or the agent's knowledge about the world is important to formulate notions such as `planning to achieve something', `controlling a dynamical system', `diagnosing or finding explanations to observed behavior', `predicting the outcome of a series of actions and events', `predicting how the world would evolve', etc. Formulating these is a first step in solving them. Some of the key issues behind the above can be categorized as follows: (a) Developing languages for representing actions, the structure of the world such as causal relationship between properties of the world, and the effects of the actions on the world. (b) Developing languages for expressing goals or directives. (c) Developing ways to achieve (b) given (a), and (d) Developing execution languages and verifying correctness (using (a)) of execution programs in these languages for a given (b).

In this course we will cover the above basics, their implementation using ASP (answer set programming) and delve into some recent research on reasoning about actions and change in a multi-agent domain where while some agents may be performing an action, some other agents may be observing it from far, while the remaining may have no clue about it. In the process we will learn about and tie together various concepts and languages including, action description languages, temporal logics, reasoning about causality, modal logics (and Kripke models), Golog, HTN (hierarchical task networks), and answer set programming.

This is a course of the Vienna PhD School of Informatics (also open for students of the EMCL Master Programme) and the course will be held by Prof. Baral. Schedule: May 31st: 1-4:20 p.m.; room "von Neumann" (Favoritenstraße) June 2nd: 1-4:20 p.m.; room "von Neumann" (Favoritenstraße) June 4th: 1-4:20 p.m.; room 183/2 (Favoritenstraße) June 7th: 10 a.m.-1:20 p.m.; room 188/2 (Favoritenstraße) June 9th: 10 a.m.-1:20 p.m.; room "von Neumann" (Favoritenstraße) June 11th: 1-4:20 p.m.; room 183/2 (Favoritenstraße)

https://www.informatik.tuwien.ac.at/teaching/doctoral/phdschool/internal