Temporal Reasoning Based on Interval Algebra in Artificial Intelligence

Temporal representation and reasoning are important research area in artificial intelligence. And it is widely used not only in logical basic research but also in knowledge system. Interval Algebra (IA) is a temporal theory, which is independent from specific applications. Uncertain temporal relations can be represented and reasoned by IA. IA has strong expressive ability in tense, and it can represent all natural temporal relations. At the same time, temporal relation represented by IA is highly visual and comprehensive. In additional, IA has been extended from one-dimension temporal area to two-dimension spatial area, that is to say, interval algebra can be developed to rectangle algebra (RA) for two-dimension reasoning. In the temporal reasoning, if interval algebra is combined with interval matrix, the computing efficiency is improved, and the temporal representation keeps visual and comprehensive as well.