Dynamic, automatic, first-order ontology repair by diagnosis of failed plan execution

We describe ORS, an ontology repair system. In contrast to most ontology matching systems, ORS is designed to repair an ontology that does not accurately model its domain. ORS’s ontology repairs include belief revisions, but more often makes signature repairs. It does not require full access to the ontologies of other agents and works entirely automatically and dynamically. ORS is the first example of a new breed of dynamic, automatic ontology-repair mechanisms, which we believe will be essential to realise the vision of autonomous, interacting agents, such as envisaged in the emantic Web. Full access to another (potentially rival) agent’s ontology is unrealistic; static and interactive matching mechanisms are unrealistic in the context of huge, dynamic populations of agents and full ontological agreement is pragmatically unrealistic. We present encouraging experimental results, plus an analysis of current limitations to be addressed in future work.