Answer Set Programming for Qualitative Spatio-temporal Reasoning: Methods and Experiments

We study the translation of reasoning problems involving qualitative spatio-temporal calculi into answer set programming (ASP). We present various alternative transformations and provide a qualitative comparison among them. An implementation of these transformations is provided by a tool that transforms problem instances specified in the language of the Generic Qualitative Reasoner (GQR) into ASP problems. Finally, we report on an experimental analysis of solving consistency problems for Allen’s Interval Algebra and the Region Connection Calculus with eight base relations (RCC-8)