Temporal sequences of qualitative information: Reasoning about the topology of constant-size moving regions

Abstract

Relying on the recently introduced multi-algebras, we present a general approach for reasoning about temporal sequences of qualitative information that is generally more efficient than existing techniques. Applying our approach to the specific case of sequences of topological information about constantsize regions, we show that the resulting formalism has a complete procedure for deciding consistency, and we identify its three maximal tractable subclasses containing all basic relations.