The Rapid Knowledge
Formationproject (RKF) is building power-tools
for knowledge acquisition. The aim is to replace human knowledge engineers with tools which will
allow multiple experts to enter knowledge into the Knowledge-Based System
directly.
The domain of application of RKF is molecular biology. The challenge
is to construct
input tools which will allow knowledge from a student course book such as
Essential Cell Biology by Bruce Alberts et al to be entered into the
Knowledge-Based System (KBS) by trained biologists who are not,
in addition, experts in knowledge representation.
AIAI is working with Cycorp to develop process
and plan representations. These provide the basic vocabulary that will be
extended by the domain experts-with the use of the RKF tool suite. We have
investigated the use of the Process Specification Language (PSL) and have
imported it into the Cyc Upper ontology. Further, we are interested in the
representation of action constraints in the KBS, and, in specific, in finding
exact equivalents for the action definitions of PDDL (the Planning Domain
Description Language). By exporting the constraints from Cyc to a specialised
solver, such as the Blackbox planner, and returning the results to Cyc, we
can take advantage of existing solvers for complex reasoning tasks. This
approach will allow us to investigate the ways in which Cyc's background
knowledge can be used to constrain the planning problem.
Reports: