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 concept 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 classification of a primitives necessary for the interpretation of the behavior in various domains, which we call ``domain ontology'',we can capture and represent the function by selection and combination of the primitives. This paper proposes the primitives we identified and the method to use them for representing function. Also we investigate the relation between function and behavior based on the primitives.As the primitives can represent concepts at various levels of abstraction,they will contribute to those tasks which rely on the simulations on the model of the target object, such as diagnosis, design, explanation, and so on.

article (ps-file, 602KB)