Algebraic Properties of Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Calculi

Qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning is based on so-called qualitative calculi. Algebraic properties of these calculi have several implications on reasoning algorithms. But what exactly is a qualitative calculus? And to which extent do the qualitative calculi proposed meet these demands? The literature provides various answers to the first question but only few facts about the second. In this paper we identify the minimal requirements to binary spatio-temporal calculi and we discuss the relevance of the according axioms for representation and reasoning. We also analyze existing qualitative calculi and provide a classification involving different notions of a relation algebra.Comment: COSIT 2013 paper including supplementary materia

Reasoning about topological and cardinal direction relations between 2-dimensional spatial objects

Increasing the expressiveness of qualitative spatial calculi is an essential step towards meeting the requirements of applications. This can be achieved by combining existing calculi in a way that we can express spatial information using relations from multiple calculi. The great challenge is to develop reasoning algorithms that are correct and complete when reasoning over the combined information. Previous work has mainly studied cases where the interaction between the combined calculi was small, or where one of the two calculi was very simple. In this paper we tackle the important combination of topological and directional information for extended spatial objects. We combine some of the best known calculi in qualitative spatial reasoning, the RCC8 algebra for representing topological information, and the Rectangle Algebra (RA) and the Cardinal Direction Calculus (CDC) for directional information. We consider two different interpretations of the RCC8 algebra, one uses a weak connectedness relation, the other uses a strong connectedness relation. In both interpretations, we show that reasoning with topological and directional information is decidable and remains in NP. Our computational complexity results unveil the significant differences between RA and CDC, and that between weak and strong RCC8 models. Take the combination of basic RCC8 and basic CDC constraints as an example: we show that the consistency problem is in P only when we use the strong RCC8 algebra and explicitly know the corresponding basic RA constraints

Reasoning about topological and cardinal direction relations between 2-dimensional spatial objects

Increasing the expressiveness of qualitative spatial calculi is an essential step towards meeting the requirements of applications. This can be achieved by combining existing calculi in a way that we can express spatial information using relations from multiple calculi. The great challenge is to develop reasoning algorithms that are correct and complete when reasoning over the combined information. Previous work has mainly studied cases where the interaction between the combined calculi was small, or where one of the two calculi was very simple. In this paper we tackle the important combination of topological and directional information for extended spatial objects. We combine some of the best known calculi in qualitative spatial reasoning, the RCC8 algebra for representing topological information, and the Rectangle Algebra (RA) and the Cardinal Direction Calculus (CDC) for directional information. We consider two different interpretations of the RCC8 algebra, one uses a weak connectedness relation, the other uses a strong connectedness relation. In both interpretations, we show that reasoning with topological and directional information is decidable and remains in NP. Our computational complexity results unveil the significant differences between RA and CDC, and that between weak and strong RCC8 models. Take the combination of basic RCC8 and basic CDC constraints as an example: we show that the consistency problem is in P only when we use the strong RCC8 algebra and explicitly know the corresponding basic RA constraints

Qualitative constraint satisfaction problems: An extended framework with landmarks

Dealing with spatial and temporal knowledge is an indispensable part of almost all aspects of human activity. The qualitative approach to spatial and temporal reasoning, known as Qualitative Spatial and Temporal Reasoning (QSTR), typically represents spatial/temporal knowledge in terms of qualitative relations (e.g., to the east of, after), and reasons with spatial/temporal knowledge by solving qualitative constraints. When formulating qualitative constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), it is usually assumed that each variable could be "here, there and everywhere".1 Practical applications such as urban planning, however, often require a variable to take its value from a certain finite domain, i.e. it is required to be 'here or there, but not everywhere'. Entities in such a finite domain often act as reference objects and are called "landmarks" in this paper. The paper extends the classical framework of qualitative CSPs by allowing variables to take values from finite domains. The computational complexity of the consistency problem in this extended framework is examined for the five most important qualitative calculi, viz. Point Algebra, Interval Algebra, Cardinal Relation Algebra, RCC5, and RCC8. We show that all these consistency problems remain in NP and provide, under practical assumptions, efficient algorithms for solving basic constraints involving landmarks for all these calculi. © 2013 Elsevier B.V

A Generalised Approach for Encoding and Reasoning with Qualitative Theories in Answer Set Programming

Qualitative reasoning involves expressing and deriving knowledge based on qualitative terms such as natural language expressions, rather than strict mathematical quantities. Well over 40 qualitative calculi have been proposed so far, mostly in the spatial and temporal domains, with several practical applications such as naval traffic monitoring, warehouse process optimisation and robot manipulation. Even if a number of specialised qualitative reasoning tools have been developed so far, an important barrier to the wider adoption of these tools is that only qualitative reasoning is supported natively, when real-world problems most often require a combination of qualitative and other forms of reasoning. In this work, we propose to overcome this barrier by using ASP as a unifying formalism to tackle problems that require qualitative reasoning in addition to non-qualitative reasoning. A family of ASP encodings is proposed which can handle any qualitative calculus with binary relations. These encodings are experimentally evaluated using a real-world dataset based on a case study of determining optimal coverage of telecommunication antennas, and compared with the performance of two well-known dedicated reasoners. Experimental results show that the proposed encodings outperform one of the two reasoners, but fall behind the other, an acceptable trade-off given the added benefits of handling any type of reasoning as well as the interpretability of logic programs. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.Comment: Paper presented at the 36th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2020), University Of Calabria, Rende (CS), Italy, September 2020, 18 pages, 3 figure

Investigation of the tradeoff between expressiveness and complexity in description logics with spatial operators

Le Logiche Descrittive sono una famiglia di formalismi molto espressivi per la rappresentazione della conoscenza. Questi formalismi sono stati investigati a fondo dalla comunit\ue0 scientifica, ma, nonostante questo grosso interesse, sono state definite poche Description Logics con operatori spaziali e tutte centrate sul Region Connection Calculus. Nella mia tesi considero tutti i pi\uf9 importanti formalismi di Qualitative Spatial Reasoning per mereologie, mereo-topologie e informazioni sulla direzione e studio alcune tecniche generali di ibridazione. Nella tesi presento un\u2019introduzione ai principali formalismi di Qualitative Spatial Reasoning e le principali famiglie di Description Logics. Nel mio lavoro, introduco anche le tecniche di ibridazione per estendere le Description Logics al ragionamento su conoscenza spaziale e presento il potere espressivo dei linguaggi ibridi ottenuti. Vengono presentati infine un risultato generale di para-decidibilit\ue0 per logiche descrittive estese da composition-based role axioms e l\u2019analisi del tradeoff tra espressivit\ue0 e propriet\ue0 computazionali delle logiche descrittive spaziali.Description Logics are a family of expressive Knowledge-Representation formalisms that have been deeply investigated. Nevertheless the few examples of DLs with spatial operators in the current literature are defined to include only the spatial reasoning capabilities corresponding to the Region Connection Calculus. In my thesis I consider all the most important Qualitative Spatial Reasoning formalisms for mereological, mereo-topological and directional information and investigate some general hybridization techniques. I will present a short overview of the main formalisms of Qualitative Spatial Reasoning and the principal families of DLs. I introduce the hybridization techniques to extend DLs to QSR and present the expressiveness of the resulting hybrid languages. I also present a general paradecidability result for undecidable languages equipped with composition-based role axioms and the tradeoff analysis of expressiveness and computational properties for the spatial DLs