------------------------------ README ------------------------------ A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MOTEL ----------------------------- MOTEL is a logic-based knowledge representation languages of the KL-ONE family. It contains as a kernel the ALC language which is a decidable sublanguage of first-order predicate logic. Whereas ALC is a single-agent knowledge representation language, i.e. ALC is only able to represent general world knowledge or the knowledge of one agent about the world, MOTEL is a multi-agent knowledge representation system. The MOTEL language allows modal contexts and modal concept forming operators which allow to represent and reason about the believes and wishes of multiple agents. Furthermore it is possible to represent defaults and stereotypes. Beside the basic resoning facilities for consistency checking, classification, and realization, MOTEL provides an abductive inference mechanism. Furthermore it is able to give explanations for its inferences. Keywords: Knowledge representation, Modal Logic, Stereotypes, Default Reasoning, Abduction. Contact Address: Ullrich Hustadt Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Informatik Geb"aude 44, Im Stadtwald 66123 Saarbr"ucken, Germany e-mail: Ullrich.Hustadt@mpi-sb.mpg.de voice: +49 681 302 5431 fax: +49 681 302 5401 The latest version of MOTEL can be received by anonymous ftp from mpi-sb.mpg.de (139.19.1.1):/pub/tools/motel.tar.Z This compressed tar-file contains the MOTEL sources (one PROLOG file) and the user manual (one Postscript file). If you have any problems getting the system or any questions concerning MOTEL you can send an e-mail message to the address given above. To run MOTEL, you need one of the following PROLOG systems: - SWI-Prolog (Version 1.6.17 June 1993) - Quintus Prolog Release 3.1.1 - SICStus 2.1