Topological constraints: A representational framework for approximate spatial and temporal reasoning

Abstract

This paper is based on two premises. First, real world spatial and temporal information is often imprecise and uncertain. Second, there are certain similarities between spatial and temporal reasoning which can be exploited to build an integrated reasoning framework. The latter is important because planning and reasoning usually requires consideration of both the temporal and spatial aspects of the situation under study. Topological constraints are introduced in this paper as an uniform representation schema for both spatial and temporal concepts. Fuzzy logic is used to provide the mathematical basis for representing imprecision and uncertainty.