Abstract:
Although a lot of researchers have pointed out the significance of
functional representation, the general relations between function
and behavior is not fully understood yet. We consider the knowledge
of each component in a system as consisting of two elements. One is
a necessary and sufficient information for simulation of the component
which we call behavior.The other is the interpretation of the behavior
under a desirable state which the component is expected to achieve,
which we call function. By identifying primitives necessary for the
interpretation of the behavior in various domains, we can capture
what function is and represent it by selection and combination of them.
This paper proposes FBRL, a language for representing function and
behavior with the primitives we identified and discuss its application
to explanation generation. First half of this paper briefly explains FBRL.
We also investigate the relation between function and behavior based on
the primitives of FBRL. As FBRL can represent concepts at various
levels of abstraction, it contributes to explanation generation by
providing informations for mapping behavior of a component to a term
which represents its function. Second half of this paper shows an
example which shows how FBRL contributes to explanation generation.