Qualitative Spatial Knowledge Research Articles

Large scale distributed spatio-temporal reasoning using real-world knowledge graphs

Most of the existing work in the field of Qualitative Spatial Temporal Reasoning (QSTR) has focussed on comparatively small constraint networks that consist of hundreds or at most thousands of relations. Recently we have seen the emergence of much larger qualitative spatial knowledge graphs that feature hundreds of thousands and millions of relations. Traditional approaches to QSTR are unable to reason over networks of such size.In this article we describe ParQR, a parallel, distributed implementation of QSTR techniques that addresses the challenge of reasoning over large-scale qualitative spatial and temporal datasets. We have implemented ParQR using the Apache Spark framework, and evaluated our approach using both large scale synthetic datasets and real-world knowledge graphs. We show that our approach scales effectively, is able to handle constraint networks consisting of millions of relations, and outperforms current distributed implementations of QSTR.

MRSPAKE : Hadoop MapReduce를 이용한 웹 규모의 공간 지식 추출기

본 논문에서는 Hadoop MapReduce 병렬 분산 컴퓨팅 환경을 이용해 개발한 공간 지식 추출기를 제안한다. 이 공간 지식 추출기는 대용량의 공간 데이터 집합으로부터, 임의의 두 공간 객체들 사이에 만족되는 위상 관계와 방향 관계를 나타내는 정성 공간 지식 베이스를 생성해낸다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 MapReduce 기반의 대용량 공간 지식 추출기 MRSPAKE는 HDFS 상의 분산 공간 데이터 파일에 대한 R 트리 색인과 범위 질의들을 이용함으로써, 웹 규모의 정성 공간 지식 베이스를 매우 효율적으로 추출해낸다. 대표적인 공개 데이터 집합인 Open Street Map(OSM)을 이용한 성능 분석 실험을 통해, 본 논문에서 제안하는 웹 규모의 공간 지식 추출기 MRSPAKE의 높은 성능과 확장성을 확인할 수 있었다. In this paper, we present a spatial knowledge extractor implemented in Hadoop MapReduce parallel, distributed computing environment. From a large spatial dataset, this knowledge extractor automatically derives a qualitative spatial knowledge base, which consists of both topological and directional relations on pairs of two spatial objects. By using R-tree index and range queries over a distributed spatial data file on HDFS, the MapReduce-enabled spatial knowledge extractor, MRSPAKE, can produce a web-scale spatial knowledge base in highly efficient way. In experiments with the well-known open spatial dataset, Open Street Map (OSM), the proposed web-scale spatial knowledge extractor, MRSPAKE, showed high performance and scalability.

Relations Between Spatial Calculi About Directions and Orientations

Qualitative spatial descriptions characterize essential properties of spatial objects or configurations by relying on relative comparisons rather than measuring. Typically, in qualitative approaches only relatively coarse distinctions between configurations are made. Qualitative spatial knowledge can be used to represent incomplete and underdetermined knowledge in a systematic way. This is especially useful if the task is to describe features of classes of configurations rather than individual configurations. Although reasoning with them is generally NP-hard, relative directions are important because they play a key role in human spatial descriptions and there are several approaches how to represent them using qualitative methods. In these approaches directions between spatial locations can be expressed as constraints over infinite domains, e.g. the Euclidean plane. The theory of relation algebras has been successfully applied to this field. Viewing relation algebras as universal algebras and applying and modifying standard tools from universal algebra in this work, we (re)define notions of qualitative constraint calculus, of homomorphism between calculi, and of quotient of calculi. Based on this method we derive important properties for spatial calculi from corresponding properties of related calculi. From a conceptual point of view these formal mappings between calculi are a means to translate between different granularities.

SQUERY : 공간 추론과 기하학적 연산 기능을 포함한 공간 질의 처리기

In this paper, we propose a spatial query processor, SQUERY, which can derive rich query results through spatial reasoning on the initial knowledge base, as well as, process both qualitative and quantitative queries about the topological and directional relationships between spatial objects. In order to derive richer query results, the query processor expands the knowledge base by applying forward spatial reasoning into the initial knowledge base in a preprocessing step. The proposed query processor uses not only qualitative spatial knowledge describing topological/directional relationship between spatial objects, but also utilizes quantitative spatial knowledge including geometric data of individual spatial objects through geometric computation. The results of an experiment with the OSM(Open Street Map) spatial knowledge base demonstrates the high performance of our spatial query processing system.

Cylindrical algebraic decomposition for reasoning about qualitative spatial knowledge

Cylindrical algebraic decomposition for reasoning about qualitative spatial knowledge

Egocentric qualitative spatial knowledge representation for physical robots

Although recent (physical) robots have powerful sensors and actuators their abilities to show intelligent behavior is often limited. One key reason is the lack of an appropriate spatial representation. Spatial knowledge plays a crucial role in navigation, (self- and object-)localization, planning and reasoning for physically grounded robots. However, it is a major difficulty of most existing approaches that each of these tasks imposes heterogeneous requirements on the representation. In this paper, we propose an egocentric representation which relies on 1D ordering information that still provides sufficient allocentric information to solve navigation and (self- and object-)localization tasks. Furthermore, we claim that our approach supports an efficient, incremental process based on a simple 1D-representation.

Dominance Diagrams: A Tool for Qualitative Reasoning About Continuous Systems

Dominance diagrams are an extension of the conceptual neighbourhood diagrams (CNDs) that have become familiar in the areas of qualitative spatial and temporal knowledge representation. They are als...

A method of spatial reasoning based on qualitative trigonometry

Due to the lack of exact quantitative information or the difficulty associated with obtaining or processing such information, qualitative spatial knowledge representation and reasoning often become an essential means for solving spatial constraint problems as found in science and engineering. This paper presents a computational approach to representing and reasoning about spatial constraints in two-dimensional Euclidean space, where the a priori spatial information is not precisely expressed in quantitative terms. The spatial quantities considered in this work are qualitative distances and qualitative orientation angles. Here, we explicitly define the semantics of these quantities and thereafter formulate a representation of qualitative trigonometry (QTRIG). The resulting QTRIG formalism provides the necessary inference rules for qualitative spatial reasoning. In the paper, we illustrate how the QTRIG relationships can be employed in generating qualitative spatial descriptions in two-dimensional Euclidean geometric problems, and furthermore, how the derived qualitative spatial descriptions can be used to guide a simulated-annealing-based exact quantitative value assignment. Finally, we discuss an application of the proposed spatial reasoning method to the kinematic constraint analysis in computer-aided pre-parametric mechanism design.

Qualitative representation of spatial knowledge in two-dimensional space

Various relation-based systems, concerned with the qualitative representation and processing of spatial knowledge, have been developed in numerous application domains. In this article, we identify the common concepts underlying qualitative spatial knowledge representation, we compare the representational properties of the different systems, and we outline the computational tasks involved in relation-based spatial information processing. We also describe symbolic spatial indexes, relation-based structures that combine several ideas in spatial knowledge representation. A symbolic spatial index is an array that preserves only a set of spatial relations among distinct objects in an image, called the modeling space; the index array discards information, such as shape and size of objects, and irrelevant spatial relations. The construction of a symbolic spatial index from an input image can be thought of as a transformation that keeps only a set of representative points needed to define the relations of the modeling space. By keeping the relative arrangements of the representative points in symbolic spatial indexes and discarding all other points, we maintain enough information to answer queries regarding the spatial relations of the modeling space without the need to access the initial image or an object database. Symbolic spatial indexes can be used to solve problems involving route planning, composition of spatial relations, and update operations.