Beyond spatial reasoning: Challenges for ecological problem solving

This vision piece reflects upon virtues of early computer science due to scarcity and high cost of computational resources. It critically assesses divergences between real-world problems and their computational counterparts in commonsense problem solving. The paper points out the different objectives of commonsense versus scientific approaches to problem solving. It describes how natural cognitive systems exploit space and time without explicitly representing their properties and why purely computational approaches are less efficient than their natural role models, as they depend on explicit representations. We argue for investigating spatio-temporally integrated methods to spatial problem solving. We contrast these methods to sequential computational approaches that require digital twins of the environment and cannot make direct use of simultaneous spatio-temporal interactions. The paper concludes with predicting future developments in problem solving, praising the relative merits of different routes to be taken. It advocates the translation of fundamental cognitive principles into technical robotic solutions

ROTUNDE - A Smart Meeting Cinematography Initiative: Tools, Datasets, and Benchmarks for Cognitive Interpretation and Control

We construe smart meeting cinematography with a focus on professional situations such as meetings and seminars, possibly conducted in a distributed manner across socio-spatially separated groups. The basic objective in smart meeting cinematography is to interpret professional interactions involving people, and automatically produce dynamic recordings of discussions, debates, presentations etc in the presence of multiple communication modalities. Typical modalities include gestures (e.g., raising one's hand for a question, applause), voice and interruption, electronic apparatus (e.g., pressing a button), movement (e.g., standing-up, moving around) etc. ROTUNDE, an instance of smart meeting cinematography concept, aims to: (a) develop functionality-driven benchmarks with respect to the interpretation and control capabilities of human-cinematographers, real-time video editors, surveillance personnel, and typical human performance in everyday situations; (b) Develop general tools for the commonsense cognitive interpretation of dynamic scenes from the viewpoint of visuo-spatial cognition centred perceptual narrativisation. Particular emphasis is placed on declarative representations and interfacing mechanisms that seamlessly integrate within large-scale cognitive (interaction) systems and companion technologies consisting of diverse AI sub-components. For instance, the envisaged tools would provide general capabilities for high-level commonsense reasoning about space, events, actions, change, and interaction.Comment: Appears in AAAI-2013 Workshop on: Space, Time, and Ambient Intelligence (STAMI 2013

Approaching the notion of place by contrast

Place is an elusive notion in geographic information science. This paper presents an approach to capture the notion of place by contrast. This approach is developed from cognitive concepts and the language that is used to describe places. It is complementary to those of coordinate-based systems that dominate contemporary geographic information systems. Accordingly the approach is aimed at explaining structures in verbal place descriptions and at localizing objects without committing to geometrically specified positions in space. We will demonstrate how locations can be identified by place names that are not crisply defined in terms of geometric regions. Capturing the human cognitive notion of place is considered crucial for smooth communication between human users and computer-based geographic assistance systems

A Cognitive Perspective on Spatial Context

This paper develops a representation-theoretic notion of spatial context for cognitive agents interacting with spatial environments. We discuss the current state of the art in defining context as used in context-aware and/or location- aware systems. In contrast to existing approaches, we define context through cognitive processes. The term "invisible geography" alludes to the fact that knowledge about geographic space develops through complex cognitive interaction and is not simply "out there" to be looked at. Placing (cognitive) processes in the focus of our context definition allows for a truly user-centered perspective: conceptualizations imbue spatial structures with meaning. This allows for fixing terminological problems and relating context definitions to work in spatial information theory and cognitive science. Although we focus on spatial context, the approach is generic and can be adapted to other domains in which cognitive aspects concerning users of information systems are central

05491 Abstracts Collection -- Spatial Cognition: Specialization and Integration

From 04.12.05 to 09.12.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05491 ``Spatial Cognition: Specialization and Integration\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Approaching the notion of place by contrast

Abstract: Place is an elusive notion in geographic information science. This paper presents an approach to capture the notion of place by contrast. This approach is developed from cognitive concepts and the language that is used to describe places. It is complementary to those of coordinate-based systems that dominate contemporary geographic information systems. Accordingly, the approach is aimed at explaining structures in verbal place descriptions and at localizing objects without committing to geometrically specified positions in space. We will demonstrate how locations can be identified by place names that are not crisply defined in terms of geometric regions. Capturing the human cognitive notion of place is considered crucial for smooth communication between human users and computer-based geographic assistance systems

Attentional distribution and spatial language

Kluth T, Schultheis H. Attentional distribution and spatial language. In: Freksa C, Nebel B, Hegarty M, Barkowsky T, eds. Spatial Cognition IX. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 8684. Springer International Publishing; 2014: 76-91.Whether visual spatial attention can be split to several discontinuous locations concurrently is still an open and intensely debated question. We address this question in the domain of spatial language use by comparing two existing and three newly proposed computational models. All models are assessed regarding their ability to account for human acceptability ratings for how well a given spatial term describes the spatial arrangement of two functionally related objects. One of the existing models assumes that taking the functional relations into account involves split attention. All new models incorporate functional relations without assuming split attention. Our simulations suggest that not assuming split attention is more appropriate for taking the functional relations into account than assuming split attention. At the same time, the simulations raise doubt as to whether any of the models appropriately captures the impact of functional relations on spatial language use