Toward Cognitive and Immersive Systems: Experiments in a Cognitive
  Microworld
  As computational power has continued to increase, and sensors have become
more accurate, the corresponding advent of systems that are at once cognitive
and immersive has arrived. These \textit{cognitive and immersive systems}
(CAISs) fall squarely into the intersection of AI with HCI/HRI: such systems
interact with and assist the human agents that enter them, in no small part
because such systems are infused with AI able to understand and reason about
these humans and their knowledge, beliefs, goals, communications, plans, etc.
We herein explain our approach to engineering CAISs. We emphasize the capacity
of a CAIS to develop and reason over a `theory of the mind' of its human
partners. This capacity entails that the AI in question has a sophisticated
model of the beliefs, knowledge, goals, desires, emotions, etc.\ of these
humans. To accomplish this engineering, a formal framework of very high
expressivity is needed. In our case, this framework is a \textit{cognitive
event calculus}, a particular kind of quantified multi-operator modal logic,
and a matching high-expressivity automated reasoner and planner. To explain,
advance, and to a degree validate our approach, we show that a calculus of this
type satisfies a set of formal requirements, and can enable a CAIS to
understand a psychologically tricky scenario couched in what we call the
\textit{cognitive polysolid framework} (CPF). We also formally show that a room
that satisfies these requirements can have a useful property we term
\emph{expectation of usefulness}. CPF, a sub-class of \textit{cognitive
microworlds}, includes machinery able to represent and plan over not merely
blocks and actions (such as seen in the primitive `blocks worlds' of old), but
also over agents and their mental attitudes about both other agents and
inanimate objects.
