Combining cardinal direction relations and relative orientation relations in Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

Abstract

Abstract. Combining different knowledge representation languages is one of the main topics in Qualitative Spatial Reasoning (QSR). Existing languages are generally incomparable in terms of expressive power; as such, their combination compensates each other’s representational deficiencies, and is seen as an answer to the emerging demand from real applications, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), robot navigation, or shape description, for the representation of more specific knowledge than is allowed by each of the languages taken separately. Knowledge expressed in such a combined language decomposes then into parts, or components, each expressed in one of the combined languages. Reasoning internally within each component of such knowledge involves only the language the component is expressed in, which is not new. The challenging question is to come with methods for the interaction of the different components of such knowledge. With these considerations in mind, we propose a calculus, cCOA, combining, thus more expressive than each of, two calculi well-known in QSR: Frank’s cardinal direction calculus,