This paper approaches the selection and development of appropriate computational geometry algorithms from a system design viewpoint: for one particular but important application. This is the domain of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) or Geomatics. We start with an outline of the subject, followed by a brief description of current commercial practice, then set specifications for a “next gene...

ing Spatial Relations Among Goal Locations Michael Brown Villanova University

Representation of spatial information for the Semantic Web often involves qualitative defined information (i.e., information described using natural language terms such as “Left”), since precise arithmetic descriptions using coordinates and angles are not always available. A basic aspect of spatial information is directional relations, thus embedding directional spatial relations into ontologie...

In this paper a visual approach to querying in large spatial databases is presented. A diagrammatic technique utilising a data flow metaphor is used to express different kinds of spatial and non-spatial constraints. Basic filters are designed to represent the various types of queries in such systems. Icons of different types of spatial relations are used to denote the filters. Different granula...

To operate intelligently in domestic environments, robots require the ability to understand arbitrary spatial relations between objects and to generalize them to objects of varying sizes and shapes. In this work, we present a novel end-to-end approach to generalize spatial relations based on distance metric learning. We train a neural network to transform 3D point clouds of objects to a metric ...

Past research indicates that specific shape recognition and spatial-relations encoding rely on subsystems that exhibit right-hemisphere advantages, whereas abstract shape recognition and spatial-relations encoding rely on subsystems that exhibit left-hemisphere advantages. Given these apparent regularities, we tested whether asymmetries in shape processing are causally related to asymmetries in...

This paper1 deals with the definition of a computational semantics for spatial relations between objects in a scene. In particular we examine the effects of the observer's position on the computation of spatial relations, the use of path prepositions, and degrees of applicability for spatial relations. Representational prerequisites and the computational analysis of spatial relations are invest...

The localization of an object within a certain environment requires the selection of an appropriate reference object and the establishment of adequate spatial relations between the objects. The decision, which reference object to choose, demands consideration of all applicable spatial relations, which therefore have to be computed before the nal decision can be made. However, the calculation of...

Developmental studies show that it takes longer for children learning spoken languages to acquire viewpointdependent spatial relations (e.g., left-right, front-behind), compared to ones that are not viewpoint-dependent (e.g., in, on, under). The current study investigates how children learn to express viewpoint-dependent relations in a sign language where depicted spatial relations can be commu...

Schemas are abstract nonverbal representations that parsimoniously depict spatial relations. Despite their ubiquitous use in maps and diagrams, little is known about their neural instantiation. We sought to determine the extent to which schematic representations are neurally distinguished from language on the one hand, and from rich perceptual representations on the other. In patients with eith...