In order to collaborate with people in the real world, cognitive systems must be able to represent and reason about spatial regions in human environments. Consider the command “go to the front of the classroom”. The spatial region mentioned (the front of the classroom) is not perceivable using geometry alone. Instead it is defined by its functional use, implied by nearby objects and their configuration. In this paper, we define such areas as context-dependent spatial regions and propose a method for a cognitive system to learn them incrementally by combining qualitative spatial representations, semantic labels, and analogy. Using data from a mobile robot, we generate a relational representation of semantically labeled objects and their configuration. Next, we show how the boundary of a context-dependent spatial region can be defined using anchor points. Finally, we demonstrate how an existing computational model of analogy can be used to transfer this region to a new situation.

In this paper we present a principled planner based approach to the active visual object search problem in unknown environments. We make use of a hierarchical planner that combines the strength of decision theory and heuristics. Furthermore, our object search approach leverages on the conceptual spatial knowledge in the form of object co-occurrences and semantic place categorisation. A hierarchical model for representing object locations is presented with which the planner is able to perform indirect search. Finally we present real world experiments to show the feasibility of the approach. 1

In order to collaborate with people in the real world, cognitive systems must be able to represent and reason about spatial regions in human environments. Consider the command “go to the front of the classroom”. The spatial region mentioned (the front of the classroom) is not perceivable using geometry alone. Instead it is defined by its functional use, implied by nearby objects and their configuration. In this paper, we define such areas as context-dependent spatial regions and propose a method for a cognitive system to learn them incrementally by combining qualitative spatial representations, semantic labels, and analogy. Using data from a mobile robot, we generate a relational representation of semantically labeled objects and their configuration. Next, we show how the boundary of a context-dependent spatial region can be defined using anchor points. Finally, we demonstrate how an existing computational model of analogy can be used to transfer this region to a new situation.

Dora, the robot, is trying to find object in its environment. Instead of just exhaustively searching everywhere, Dora is equipped with probabilistic reasoning, representations, and planning to exploit uncertain common-sense knowledge, such as that cornflakes are usually found in kitchens, while also accounting for the uncertainty of sensing in the real-world. Dora demonstrates how to combine task and observation planning in the presence of uncertainty by autonomously switching between contingent and sequential planning sessions. The demonstration emphasises the benefit of employing a robot with common-sense knowledge and the benefit of the switching planner.

Abstract. Dealing with uncertainty is one of the major challenges when constructing autonomous mobile robots. The CogX project addressed key aspects of that by developing and implementing mechanisms for selfunderstanding and self-extension – i.e. awareness of gaps in knowledge, and the ability to reason and act to fill those gaps. We discuss our robot called Dora, a showcase outcome of that project. Dora is able to perform a variety of search tasks in unexplored environments. One of the results of the project is the Dora robot, that can perform a variety of search tasks in unexplored environments by exploiting probabilistic knowledge representations while retaining efficiency by using a fast planning system. 1