Results 1 - 10
of
48
Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning: An Overview
- FUNDAMENTA INFORMATICAE
, 2001
"... The paper is a overview of the major qualitative spatial representation and reasoning techniques. We survey the main aspects of the representation of qualitative knowledge including ontological aspects, topology, distance, orientation and shape. We also consider qualitative spatial reasoning inclu ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 264 (18 self)
- Add to MetaCart
The paper is a overview of the major qualitative spatial representation and reasoning techniques. We survey the main aspects of the representation of qualitative knowledge including ontological aspects, topology, distance, orientation and shape. We also consider qualitative spatial reasoning including reasoning about spatial change. Finally there is a discussion of theoretical results and a glimpse of future work. The paper is a revised and condensed version of [33, 34].
Formal Ontology, Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation
- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN AND COMPUTER STUDIES
, 1995
"... The purpose of this paper is to defend the systematic introduction of formal ontological principles in the current practice of knowledge engineering, to explore the various relationships between ontology and knowledge representation, and to present the recent trends in this promising research area. ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 231 (13 self)
- Add to MetaCart
The purpose of this paper is to defend the systematic introduction of formal ontological principles in the current practice of knowledge engineering, to explore the various relationships between ontology and knowledge representation, and to present the recent trends in this promising research area. According to the "modelling view" of knowledge acquisition proposed by Clancey, the modeling activity must establish a correspondence between a knowledge base and two separate subsystems: the agent's behavior (i.e. the problem-solving expertize) and its own environment (the problem domain). Current knowledge modelling methodologies tend to focus on the former subsystem only, viewing domain knowledge as strongly dependent on the particular task at hand: in fact, AI researchers seem to have been much more interested in the nature of reasoning rather than in the nature of the real world. Recently, however, the potential value of task-independent knowlege bases (or "ontologies") suitable to large scale integration has been underlined in many ways. In this paper, we compare the dichotomy between reasoning and representation to the philosophical distinction between epistemology and ontology. We introduce the notion of the ontological level, intermediate between the epistemological and the conceptual level discussed by Brachman, as a way to characterize a knowledge representation formalism taking into account the intended meaning of its primitives. We then discuss some formal ontological distinctions which may play an important role for such purpose.
L.: Toward a Geometry of Common Sense: A Semantics and a Complete Axiomatization of Mereotopology
- in: IJCAI-95
"... Mereological and topological notions of connection, part, interior and complement are central to spatial reasoning and to the semantics of natural language expressions concerning locations and relative positions. While several authors have proposed axioms for these notions, no one with the exception ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 114 (0 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
Mereological and topological notions of connection, part, interior and complement are central to spatial reasoning and to the semantics of natural language expressions concerning locations and relative positions. While several authors have proposed axioms for these notions, no one with the exception of Tarski [18], who based his axiomatization of mereological notions on a Euclidean metric, has attempted to give them a semantics. We offer an alternative to Tarski, starting with mereotopological notions that have proved useful in the semantic analysis of spatial expressions. We also give a complete axiomatization of this account of mereotopological reasoning. 1
Mereotopology: a theory of parts and boundaries
- Data & Knowledge Engineering
, 1996
"... The paper is a contribution to formal ontology. It seeks to use topological means in order to derive ontological laws pertaining to the boundaries and interiors of wholes. to relations of contact and connectedness. to the concepts of surface, point, neighbourhood. and so on. The basis of the theory ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 112 (21 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
The paper is a contribution to formal ontology. It seeks to use topological means in order to derive ontological laws pertaining to the boundaries and interiors of wholes. to relations of contact and connectedness. to the concepts of surface, point, neighbourhood. and so on. The basis of the theory is mereology. the formal theory of part and whole, a theory which is shown to have a number of advantages. for ontological purposes. over standard treatments of topology in set-theoretic terms. One central goal of the paper is to provide a rigorous formulation of B~ntano's thesis to the effect that a boundary can exist as a matter of necessity only as part of a whole of higher dimension of which it is the boundary. It concludes with a brief survey of current applications of mereotopology in areas such as natural-language analysis, geographic information systems, machine vision, naive physics, and database and knowledge engineering.
An ontological analysis of the relationship construct in conceptual modeling
- ACM Trans. Database Systems
, 1999
"... Conceptual models or semantic data models were developed to capture the meaning of an application domain as perceived by someone. Moreover, concepts employed in semantic data models have recently been adopted in object-oriented approaches to systems analysis and design. To employ conceptual modeling ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 107 (6 self)
- Add to MetaCart
Conceptual models or semantic data models were developed to capture the meaning of an application domain as perceived by someone. Moreover, concepts employed in semantic data models have recently been adopted in object-oriented approaches to systems analysis and design. To employ conceptual modeling constructs effectively, their meanings have to be defined rigorously. Often, however, rigorous definitions of these constructs are missing. This situation occurs especially in the case of the relationship construct. Empirical evidence shows that use of relationships is often problematical as a way of communicating the meaning of an application domain. For example, users of conceptual modeling methodologies are frequently confused about whether to show an association between things via a relationship, an entity, or an attribute. Because conceptual models are intended to capture knowledge about a real-world domain, we take the view that the meaning of modeling constructs should be sought in models of reality. Accordingly, we use ontology, which is the branch of philosophy dealing with models of reality, to analyze the meaning of common conceptual modeling constructs. Our analysis provides a precise definition of several conceptual modeling constructs. Based on our analysis, we derive rules for the use of relationships in entity-relationship conceptual modeling. Moreover, we show how the rules resolve ambiguities that exist in current practice and how they can enrich the capacity of an entity-relationship conceptual model to capture knowledge about an application domain.
A Pointless Theory of Space Based on Strong Connection and Congruence
- In Proceedings of Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR96
, 1996
"... We present a logical theory of space where only tridimensional regions are assumed in the domain. Three distinct primitives are used to describe their mereological, topological and morphological properties: mereology is described by a parthood relation satisfying the axioms of Closed Extensional Mer ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 102 (12 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
We present a logical theory of space where only tridimensional regions are assumed in the domain. Three distinct primitives are used to describe their mereological, topological and morphological properties: mereology is described by a parthood relation satisfying the axioms of Closed Extensional Mereology; topology is described by means of a "simple region" predicate, by which a relation of “strong connection ” between regions having at least a surface in common is defined; morphology is described by means of a "congruence " primitive, whose axioms exploit Tarski's analogy between points and spheres. 1
Parts, Wholes, and Part-Whole Relations: The Prospects of Mereotopology
- Data and Knowledge Engineering
, 1996
"... INTRODUCTION This is a brief overview of formal theories concerned with the study of the notions of (and the relations between) parts and wholes. The guiding idea is that we can distinguish between a theory of parthood (mereology) and a theory of wholeness (holology, which is essentially afforded b ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 92 (16 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
INTRODUCTION This is a brief overview of formal theories concerned with the study of the notions of (and the relations between) parts and wholes. The guiding idea is that we can distinguish between a theory of parthood (mereology) and a theory of wholeness (holology, which is essentially afforded by topology), and the main question examined is how these two theories can be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and wholes. We examine various non-equivalent ways of pursuing this task, mainly with reference to its relevance to spatio-temporal reasoning. In particular, three main strategies are compared: (i) mereology and topology as two independent (though mutually related) theories; (ii) mereology as a general theory subsuming topology; (iii) topology as a general theory subsuming mereology. This is done in Sections 4 through 6. We also consider some more speculative strategies and directions for further research. First, however, we begin with some preliminary outline of
An ontology of meta-level categories
- Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (KR94
, 1994
"... We focus in this paper on some meta-level ontological distinctions among unary predicates, like those between concepts and assertional properties. Three are the main contributions of this work, mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledg ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 81 (19 self)
- Add to MetaCart
We focus in this paper on some meta-level ontological distinctions among unary predicates, like those between concepts and assertional properties. Three are the main contributions of this work, mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation. The first is a formal notion of ontological commitment, based on a modal logic endowed with mereological and topological primitives. The second is a formal account of Strawson's distinction between sortal and non-sortal predicates. Assertional
Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning
- An Overview”, Fundamenta Informaticae
, 2001
"... The need for spatial representations and spatial reasoning is ubiquitous in AI – from robot planning and navigation, to interpreting visual inputs, to understanding natural language – in all these cases the need to represent and reason about spatial aspects of the world is of key importance. Related ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 71 (10 self)
- Add to MetaCart
(Show Context)
The need for spatial representations and spatial reasoning is ubiquitous in AI – from robot planning and navigation, to interpreting visual inputs, to understanding natural language – in all these cases the need to represent and reason about spatial aspects of the world is of key importance. Related fields of research, such as geographic information science
A Connection Based Approach to Commonsense Topological Description and Reasoning
, 1995
"... The standard mathematical approaches to topology, point-set topology and algebraic topology, treat points as the fundamental, undefined entities, and construct extended spaces as sets of points with additional structure imposed on them. Point-set topology in particular generalises the concept of ..."
Abstract
-
Cited by 55 (8 self)
- Add to MetaCart
The standard mathematical approaches to topology, point-set topology and algebraic topology, treat points as the fundamental, undefined entities, and construct extended spaces as sets of points with additional structure imposed on them. Point-set topology in particular generalises the concept of a `space' far beyond its intuitive meaning. Even algebraic topology, which concentrates on spaces built out of `cells' topologically equivalent to n-dimensional discs, concerns itself chiefly with rather abstract reasoning concerning the association of algebraic structures with particular spaces, rather than the kind of topological reasoning which is required in everyday life, or which might illuminate the metaphorical use of topological concepts such as `connection' and `boundary'. This paper explores an alternative to these approaches, RCC theory, which takes extended spaces (`regions') rather than points as fundamental. A single relation, C (x; y) (read `Region x connects with reg...
