Dynamic Symbol Grounding: Changing Referents in Engineering Analysis and Spatial Environments

In this paper, we propose a challenging class of problems for Cognitive Systems reasoning in spatio-temporal environments. Consider a safe area in a military engagement. The safe area refers to a region in the environment. The size, shape, and location of this region is a function of the goals and capabilities of the other agents in the environment. Furthermore, this context will change over time and thereby changing the reference of this abstraction. We call such regions context-dependent spatial regions. Through an analogy with the qualitative abstractions used in the design and analysis of engineered systems, we explore this representational problem and some possible solutions. Context-Dependent Spatial Regions Natural collaboration between humans and mobile robots requires both partners to communicate with spatial language. Many regions referred to by people are defined not solely by their geometry but also by their context (e.g., the functional use of the space). Consider the following regions: the front of a classroom (Figure 1), neighborhoods in a city (Figure 2), and safety in a military engagement (Figure 3). We call such areas context-dependent spatial regions (Hawes et al. 2012). To identify the front of a classroom, one must recognize the boundaries of the classroom (e.g., the walls), the objects within the room (e.g., desks and whiteboards) as well as their functional use (e.g., students sit at the desks oriented toward a teacher). These regions are important for communication because they are tied to the goals and intentions of the actors in the environment. If someone wants to present, they stand in the front of the classroom. Neighborhoods are functional, geographic areas of cities. They provide a heuristic for people in terms of businesses, real estate prices, and crime. The Tenderloin is only a few blocks from Union Square, but in one you will find a high crime rate and inexpensive South Asian food, and in the other you will find high-end retail. Further complicating matters, the context that defines these regions is dynamic. Consider safety in a military engagement. An Figure 1: The front of the classroom depends on locations and orientations of the desks and other objects in the room. Figure 2: Neighborhoods in and around downtown San Francisco including Little Saigon, Tenderloin, and Union Square. 17 Space, Time, and Ambient Intelligence: Papers from the AAAI 2013 Workshop