Author(s)

J. Ma & B. Knight

Abstract

Absolute-time-stamping of data provides an efficient indexing method for managing the temporal aspects in process control, but suffers from the requirement that precise times for all temporal data must be known. However, systems allowing the representation of relative temporal information can suffer from the intractable nature of the inference mechanisms. As a practical solution to this problem, a special class of temporal systems, termed tim.e-limited systems, is introduced. A time-limited system allows absolute-time-stamped and relative time information in a form which is suitable for many practical cases. The main idea is that, in many applications, the relative temporal knowledge may be very limited, while most data is time-stamped with absolute time values. The architecture of su

Keywords