Abstract. Case-base reasoning in a real-time context requires the system to output the solution to a given problem in a predictable and usually very fast time frame. As the number of cases that can be processed is limited by the real-time constraint, we explore ways of selecting the most important cases and ways of speeding up case comparisons by optimizing the representation of each case. We focus on spatially-aware systems such as mobile robotic applications and the particular challenges in representing the systems ’ spatial environment. We select and combine techniques for feature selection, clustering and prototyping that are applicable in this particular context and report results from a case study with a simulated RoboCup soccer-playing agent. Our results demonstrate that preprocessing such case bases can significantly improve the imitative ability of an agent. 1