Computing Ramiications by Postprocessing

A solution to the ramiication problem caused by underlying domain constraints in Strips-like approaches is presented. We introduce the notion of causal relationships which are used in a post-processing step after having applied an action description. Moreover, we show how the information needed for these post-computations can be automatically extracted from the domain constraints plus general knowledge of which uents can possibly affect each other. We illustrate the necessity of causal relationships by an example that shows the limitedness of a common method to avoid unintended ramiications, namely, the distinction between so-called frame and non-frame u-ents. Finally, we integrate our solution into a recently developed, Strips-like yet purely de-ductive approach to reasoning about actions based on Equational Logic Programming.