Grounding commonsense knowledge in intelligent systems

Ambient environments which integrate a number of sensing devices and actuators intended for use by human users need to be able to express knowledge about objects, their functions and their properties to assist in the performance of everyday tasks. For this to occur perceptual data must be grounded to symbolic information that in its turn can be used in the communication with the human. For symbolic information to be meaningful it should be part of a rich knowledge base that includes an ontology of concepts and common sense. In this work we present an integration between ResearchCyc and an anchoring framework that mediates the connection between the perceptual information in an intelligent home environment and the reasoning system. Through simple dialogues we validate how objects placed in the home environment are grounded by a network of sensors and made available to a larger KB where reasoning is exploited. This first integration work is a step towards integrating the richness of a KRR system developed over many years in isolation, with a physically embedded intelligent system.