Introduction to reasoning about cyclic intervals

Abstract

This paper introduces a new formalism for representation and reasoning about time and space. Allen’s algebra of time intervals is well known within the constraint-based spatial and temporal reasoning community. The algebra assumes standard time, i.e., time is viewed as a linear order. Some real applications, however, such as reasoning about cyclic processes or cyclic events, need a representational framework based on (totally ordered) cyclic time. The paper describes a still-in-progress work on an algebra of cyclic time intervals, which can be looked at as the counterpart of Allen’s linear time algebra for cyclic time.