A Fuzzy Set Approach to Expressing Preferences in Spatial Reasoning
The way we use spatial descriptions in many everyday situations is of a qualitative nature. This is often achieved by specifying spatial relations between objects or regions. The advantage of using qualitative descriptions is that we can be less precise and thereby less prone to making an error. For example, it is often easier to decide whether an object is inside another object than to specify exactly where the first object is with respect to the second one. In artificial intelligence, a variety of formalisms have been developed that deal with space on the basis of relations between objects or regions that objects might occupy. One of these formalisms is the RCC theory, which is based on a primitive relation, called connectedness, and uses a set of topological relations, defined on the basis of connectedness, to provide a framework for reasoning about regions. This paper discusses an extension of the RCC theory based on fuzzy logic, which enables us to express preferences among spatial descriptions.
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
- 2.Bloch, I.: Spatial representation of spatial relationship knowledge. In: Proc. KR 2000, pp. 247–258. Breckenridge, Colorado (2000)Google Scholar
- 4.Brewka, G.: Preferred subtheories: An extended logical framework for default reasoning. In: Proc. IJCAI 1989, pp. 1043–1048 (1989)Google Scholar
- 6.Cohn, A., Gotts, N.: The ‘Egg-Yolk’ representation of regions with indeterminate boundaries. In: Burrough, P., Frank, A. (eds.) Geographical Objects with Undetermined Boundaries. GISDATA Series, vol. 2, pp. 171–187. Taylor and Francis, London (1996)Google Scholar
- 11.Guesgen, H.: Spatial reasoning based on Allen’s temporal logic. Technical Report TR-89-049, ICSI, Berkeley, California (1989)Google Scholar
- 12.Guesgen, H., Hertzberg, J.: Spatial persistence. Applied Intelligence (Special Issue on Spatial and Temporal Reasoning) 6, 11–28 (1996)Google Scholar
- 13.Guesgen, H., Hertzberg, J., Philpott, A.: Towards implementing fuzzy Allen relations. In: Proc. ECAI-94 Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Reasoning, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 49–55 (1994)Google Scholar
- 14.Klir, G., Folger, T.: Fuzzy Sets, Uncertainty, and Information. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1988)Google Scholar
- 15.Lehmann, F., Cohn, A.: The EGG/YOLK reliability hierarchy: Semantic data integration using sorts with prototypes. In: Proc. 3rd International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 1994), pp. 272–279. Gaithersburg, Maryland (1994)Google Scholar
- 17.Randell, D., Cui, Z., Cohn, A.: A spatial logic based on regions and connection. In: Proc. KR 1992, pp. 165–176. Cambridge, Massachusetts (1992)Google Scholar
- 18.Renz, J.: A spatial odyssey of the interval algebra: 1. directed intervals. In: Proc. IJCAI 2001, pp. 51–56. Seattle, Washington (2001)Google Scholar