Date: Fri, 14 Nov 97 18:44:32 GMT
Message-Id: <5660.9711141844@csparc18.scs.leeds.ac.uk>
To: smyth@sifnos.ics.uci.edu
Subject: aaai98 tutorial proposal
From: Cohn A G <agc@scs.leeds.ac.uk>


Proposal to hold a Tutorial at AAAI98 on Qualitative Spatial Reasoning
=======================================================================

Anthony G Cohn
Professor of Automated Reasoning
Division of AI, School of Computer Studies,
University of Leeds, LEEDS, LS2  9JT, ENGLAND
PHONE: +44 113 233 5482 (Secretary: 5437; Fax: 5468)
agc@scs.leeds.ac.uk
http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/spacenet/agc.html
========================================================================

Brief Description of the Tutorial
=================================

While the field of Qualitative Reasoning is now well established it is
only recently that there has been substantial investigation of calculi
suitable for representing and reasoning about space in a qualitative
way.  This tutorial will survey the state of the art in qualitative
spatial representation and reasoning techniques, including mechanisms
for reasoning about spatial change. We will look at how these ideas
may be applied in a wide variety of domains, from robotics and high
level vision to the semantics of natural language expressions and of
visual programming languages though to Geographical Information
Systems.  The tutorial will conclude with a look at open research
issues.

Why the Tutorial may be of interest to the AAAI98 audience.
==========================================================

I believe a tutorial on Qualitative Spatial Reasoning at AAAI98 is
timely for many reasons. Whereas temporal reasoning has now received
extensive attention within various tutorial forums, there have been
correspondingly very few presentations on (qualitative) spatial
reasoning. In fact the tutorial at IJCAI95 by Hernandez and Mukerjee
was almost certainly the first presentation at a major AI conference
and while the amount of research in the subject is certainly
increasing there have not been any tutorials since 1995 at a major AI
conference, apart from my IJCAI97 tutorial on which this tutorial will
build. Presenting this tutorial at AAAI98 would allow access to this
material to a wider audience.  Equally, the field is now maturing and
the technology has advanced sufficiently so that the ideas can be used
in various application domains, for example in Geographical
Information Systems, high level vision, robotics, the semantics of
spatial expression expressions, in specifying visual languages.  There
is now an active community working in the area, largely in Europe and
to a certain extent the USA, but also in some other countries and
there is a growing literature of substantive results.


Brief Resume of the Proposer.
=============================

Anthony G Cohn
Professor of Automated Reasoning
Division of AI, School of Computer Studies,
University of Leeds, LEEDS, LS2  9JT, ENGLAND
PHONE: +44 113 233 5482 (Secretary: 5437; Fax: 5468)
agc@scs.leeds.ac.uk
http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/spacenet/agc.html

I hold a Personal Chair at the University of Leeds in Automated
Reasoning and lead a research group one of whose current main
activities is to research into qualitative spatial reasoning.  I have
been treasurer and Chairman of ECCAI, the European AI Coordinating
Committee and have held the same positions in AISB, the UK AI society.
I was the IJCAI95 workshop chair, ECAI94 programme chair and was on
the advisory board for IJCAI93 so I believe I have a good appreciation
of the nature of major conferences such as AAAI.

I believe I am very well qualified to present an AAAI tutorial on QSR:
I have been researching in QSR since the late 1980s and have published
widely on the subject -- my web page lists all these publications
(most are available as postscript). I have also held a number of
grants to research into the subject, principally from the UK EPSRC,
but I am also the Scientific Coordinator of SPACENET, a European Union
funded HCM network on QSR which consists of 11 sites across Europe.
Thus I have a good knowledge not only of the work at Leeds, but also
at all these other sites and indeed others outside the network.
Indeed in the SPACENET project we are writing a book on the state of
the art in QSR and my tutorial will benefit from the extensive
discussions we have held within our workshops -- and of course I
gratefully acknowledge all the discussions I have had with my
colleagues in the network.

I have received various invitations to speak on QSR in various
international forums: the 1995 Bolzano Spring School on Spatial
Reasoning, invited talks at AISMC96 (Steyr, Austria), KI97 (Freiburg,
Germany), a tutorial at FAPR96 (Bonn, Germany), co-workshop
organiser/presenter at ESSLI95 (Barcelona, Spain).  I have also been
an invited participant at various closed workshops on spatial
reasoning (I10 and I21 of the NSF-NCGIA; an GISDATA workshop in
Vienna; an NSF workshop on spatial cognition; various IJCAI, ECAI and
AAAI workshops).

I have had extensive experience of lecturing at the Universities of
Warwick and now Leeds since 1979 and gave a tutorial on Qualitative
Reasoning jointly with Pat Hayes at ECAI86 and a lecture series at
ACAI87 (Oslo, Norway) -- in addition to the various QSR tutorials
mentioned above. I have written a survey article on QSR which appears
in the proceedings of KI97 (and can be found on my web page) and also
wrote a paper on the "Challenge of Qualitative Spatial Reasoning"
which appeared in Computing Surveys in 1995 (this paper is also on my
web page).

Objective of the Tutorial and Intended Audience of the Tutorial
===============================================================

The aim of the tutorial is to present the state of art in Qualitative
Spatial Reasoning to the non specialist; this could either provide a
suitable introduction for the intending research student, or for a
practitioner in another research area or application domain who may be
interested in exploiting QSR techniques.  Some basic knowledge of
logic would be helpful but not essential for understanding the tutorial.

Proposed Structure of the Tutorial
==================================

Introduction:
	Motivation for QSR: possible applications
	The interdisciplinary nature of QSR
	Spatial Ontlogy
	Some History
	Overview of the rest of the tutorial
	
Aspects of Spatial Representations

	Topology
		Representation of topological information has been
		perhaps the most studied aspect of QSR, perhaps not
		unsurprisingly. The tutorial will cover these ideas in
		some detail.

	Distance and Size
		Although traditional QR scalar representations can be
		used for representing qualitative distances and sizes,
		there are various interesting pecularities to discuss
		when spatial representations are concerned.

	Orientation
		A number of orientation calculi have been developed;
		these will be presented and evaluated/compared.
	
	Shape
		Representing the shape of spatial entity qualitatively
		is hard, but there have been various interesting ideas,
		combining the calculi of topology, distance and
		orientation with specific notions of shape.  These
		will be presented and compared.

	Uncertainty and Vagueness
		Many QSR calculi assume that although the calculus is
		qualitative, the underlying could in principle be
		specified precisely;  this section of the tutorial
		investigates symbolic (non numerical) calculi which
		do not make this assumption: where there is an
		inherent vagueness in the knowledge of the spatial
		entities in question.

Spatial Change
	This section of the tutorial will consider techniques for
	representing spatial change, particularly continuous change.
	

Reasoning Techniques

	This section of the tutorial will cover various AI reasoning
	techniques such as constraints, various logical reasoning techniques
	and more specialised mechanisms such as composition tables.
	Metatheoretical results will also be covered here.
	
Application Domains
	Time should allow a presentation of the application of
	QSR to some domains, hopefully illustrated by, for example,
	some video footage and/or some demos.

Research Issues
	A brief guide to current and future research will be presented.

Conclusions and Summary.

<<I will allow time for questions and answers>>


I will make Powerpoint and postscript versions of some of my IJCAI97 tutorial
available shortly at:
http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/spacenet/ijcai97-tutorial.html

=============================================


Tutorial Material
=================

Copies of slides will be made available as will a short bibliography.
Pointers will be given to online material including extensive online
bibliographies.

A/V requirements
================

I would like to present the tutorial using computer projection.
Hopefully I can bring my own laptop to hook up to the computer
projector or ohp panel, but ideally there would be a PC there (ideally
which I could preload with my data via the internet, as the tutorial
slides and demos are too big to put on a floppy or two).


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