Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

Abstract

Spatial reasoning can be seen as any deduction of knowledge from a situation having spatial properties. In our everyday interaction with the physical world, spatial reasoning is mostly driven by qualitative information rather than quantitative information. Inferring new knowledge from this qualitative spatial information is called qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR). In this document, fundamentals of QSR are presented. If an important part of the research has been dedicated to qualitative spatial representation (basic spatial entities, relationships between entities, etc.), the biggest challenge remains the development of calculi, allowing reasoning about objects in multidimensional space. The two main prevalent forms of qualitative reasoning are composition table (based on transitivity between relationships) and conceptual neighborhood diagram (based on a continuity concept between relationships). Some of the most achieved models are presented, especially models dealing with topological information and orientation information. Promising current researches are also sketched giving a wide view on this new research domain.