English web site
VITAL: Visualization and Implementation of Temporal Action Logics
The VITAL project (Visualization and Implementation of Temporal Action Logics) focuses on the development of research and application tools to support reasoning about dynamic processes which arise due to interactions between a physical artifact and the complex dynamic environment in which it is situated, or among several physical artifacts situated in similar environments. The environments of interest may be characterized by the inability to provide complete representations of their dynamics due to their complexity.
One of the primary reasoning tools used to specify both artifacts, environments and interactions is a narrative-based formalism called TAL which consists of a class of Temporal Action Logics suitable for modeling in the context of incompletely specified domains.
The current focus of the project is the development and specification of a tool, VITAL, for reasoning about temporal narratives in TAL which combines the power of both symbolic and visual modalities. Narratives may be represented in sequential text form and their models depicted in diagrammatic form in terms of time lines.
This project is supported by the ECSEL/ENSYM Excellence Center in Computer Science and Systems Engineering at Linköping University and TFR, the Swedish Council for Engineering Sciences.
VITAL: Prerequisites
VITAL is written in Java. To run recent versions of VITAL, you must install version 1.4 or higher of the Java Runtime Environment (which is available separately or as a part of the Java Development Kit). Older versions of VITAL may run using JRE 1.3 or even 1.2.
JavaSoft provides Java environments for Linux, Solaris and Windows; you can download the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or the Java Development Kit (JDK) here. There is also a list of Java implementations for other computers and operating systems.
VITAL: Download the Software
Here you can download recent versions of VITAL, as well as a few older versions from the archives. The latest beta versions are numbered 2.999.x in order to indicate that we are moving towards a public release of VITAL 3.0. Unfortunately this process has taken longer than intended, mostly due to additional work on TALplanner, which is integrated into the VITAL code base.
| Version | Release date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 2.329 | 1999-08-26 | The latest "released" version of VITAL. |
| 2.999.107.10 beta | 2001-05-15 | (Removed) |
| 2.999.107.13 beta | 2002-05-29 | The latest beta version of VITAL. Should be stable (no bugs have been reported yet), but the documentation has not been updated completely. |
| 2.999.824 alpha | 2003-03-06 | An older alpha version of VITAL. Massive changes since 2.999.107.13. |
| 2.999.832 alpha | 2003-03-28 | The previous alpha version of VITAL. A few UI improvements and parser improvements. |
| 2.999.910 alpha | 2003-10-08 | The latest alpha version of VITAL. New example domains, some query improvements (easier to read the query trace output), minor parser improvements, and some considerable UI improvements for the interpretation visualization. This should soon become the next beta version. Please test it and report any bugs or glitches to jonkv@ida.liu.se. |
VITAL: Documentation
Some knowledge about the TAL family of logics is essential for using VITAL. A tutorial for TAL is available from the Linköping Electronic Articles in Computer and Information Science:
The VITAL language description is mostly up to date, although a few sections have not yet been rewritten. The language description can be downloaded here:
- The VITAL language description (postscript) (version 0.53)
- The VITAL language description (PDF) (version 0.53)
The VITAL manual is out of date and will hopefully be updated in the near future.
