Qualitative spatial reasoning : theory and practice ; application to robot navigation

摘要

With the aim of automatically reasoning with spatial aspects in a cognitive way, several qualitative models have been developed recently in the field of qualitative spatial reasoning. However, most of these models simplify spatial objects to points, and, to date, there is no model to reason with several spatial aspects in a uniform way. This work provides an approach for integrating the qualitative concepts of orientation, distance, and cardinal directions, using points as well as extended objects as primitive of reasoning, based on Constraint Logic Programming. The resulting model has been applied to build a qualitative Navigation Simulator on the structured environment of the city of Castellon.