Topological representation and reasoning in space
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Published:2000-11
Issue:5
Volume:14
Page:373-389
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ISSN:0890-0604
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Container-title:Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing
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language:en
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Short-container-title:AIEDAM
Author:
EL-GERESY BAHER A.,ABDELMOTY ALIA I.
Abstract
In this article, an approach is presented for the
representation and reasoning over qualitative spatial relations.
A set-theoretic approach is used for representing the topology
of objects and underlying space by retaining connectivity
relationships between objects and space components in a
structure, denoted, adjacency matrix. Spatial relations
are represented by the intersection of components, and
spatial reasoning is achieved by the application of general
rules for the propagation of the intersection constraints
between those components. The representation approach is
general and can be adapted for different space resolutions
and granularities of relations. The reasoning mechanism
is simple and the spatial compositions are achieved in
a finite definite number of steps, controlled by the complexity
needed in the representation of objects and the granularity
of the spatial relations required. The application of the
method is presented over geometric structures that takes
into account qualitative surface height information. It
is also shown how directional relationships can be used
in a hybrid approach for richer composition scenarios.
The main advantage of this work is that it offers a unified
platform for handling different relations in the qualitative
space, which is a step toward developing general spatial
reasoning engines for large spatial databases.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Artificial Intelligence,Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering