When a robot is operating in a dynamic environment, it can not be assumed that a tool
required to solve a given task will always be available.
For instance, a service robot is asked to serve drinks on a tray, but the tray is broken;
such mishaps in day-to-day activities are common.
In situations like these, an effective way for a robot would be to adapt like humans,
for example, by using a substitute, like an eating plate for serving.
This skill is significant because it will allow the robots to adapt
to the unforeseen situations when performing the tasks.
Moreover, when tool is found to be unavailable during the task execution,
finding a substitute in a reasonable amount of time will be necessary
to ensure the successful completion of the task in a timely manner.
However, it would be time consuming if a robot interacts with an every
similar looking object in the environment to determine a suitability of a substitute.
The question is how to enable a robot to find a substitute without interacting with the objects.
In my doctoral research, I would like to address this problem using the techniques
from the area of knowledge representation and reasoning in the context of a service robot.
The primary goal of the research is to propose a representation formalism
to express the knowledge about objects and develop a reasoner based
on the proposed representation to determine a possible substitute.
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