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TITLE: Spatial Cognition - An AI Perspective
PRESENTER: Prof. Dr. Christian Freksa, http://www.cosy.informatik.uni-bremen.de/staff/freksa/,
AFFILIATION:Cognitive Systems Group, University of Bremen, Germany, http://www.cosy.informatik.uni-bremen.de/
DATE: Wednesday 23th February 2005
TIME: 14:00:00
PLACE: Level 1 Seminar Room
ABSTRACT:
After a decade of temporal reasoning in Artificial Intelligence
(AI) in the 1980s and 1990s, spatial reasoning and spatial cognition have
moved into the focus of interest in concentrated research enterprises
since the mid 1990s. This paper describes the interdisciplinary research
area of spatial cognition from an artificial intelligence perspective and
motivates the interest in the field and the challenges from a cognitive
perspective. It argues that all themes of cognitive science surface in
spatial cognition and that spatial cognition is particularly suitable to
investigate these themes. The particular significance of spatial
structures for knowledge acquisition and knowledge processing by cognitive
agents is described; it is shown why spatial structures are instrumental
in making sense of physical environments and abstract worlds. Basic
approaches to computationally process spatial knowledge are sketched out;
the role of qualitative reasoning in AI is compared to the role of
qualitative approaches in other disciplines. The relative merits of
intrinsically spatial and of more abstract, non-spatial ways of dealing
with spatial knowledge are discussed. The role of schematic representation
of spatial knowledge is addressed.
BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:
Christian Freksa is a professor for informatics at University of Bremen
and head of the cognitive systems group (CoSy). His research interests
focus on knowledge representation, specifically on the representation of
spatial and temporal knowledge and on reasoning with qualitative,
approximate, incomplete, imprecise, fuzzy, uncertain, and conflicting
knowledge. In the CoSy research group, formal and computational approaches
to knowledge representation are employed, and computer models of spatial
environments for simulation studies are designed. Also, autonomous robotic
experiments are carried out in the spatial environment laboratory using
diverse intelligent technologies. He closely cooperate with researchers
from other disciplines interested in the investigation of spatial
structures, especially cognitive psychology, linguistics, geography, and
design.
Prof. Freksa coordinates the Transregional Collaborative Research Center
Spatial Cognition - Reasoning, Action, Interaction (SFB/TR8), a joint
enterprise of the Universities of Bremen and Freiburg funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the International Quality
Network on Spatial Cognition (IQN) funded by the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD). In his previous position at Hamburg University
(1991-2002), Prof. Freksa coordinated the DFG Spatial Cognition Priority
Program and participated in the EU HCM project Spacenet.
Host:
Jochen Renz
Seminar Convenor:
Bekmann JP
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