Abstract
In this paper we apply a formal ontological framework in order to deconstruct two prominent approaches to navigation from cognitive robotics, the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy of Kuipers and the Route Graph of Krieg-Brückner, Werner and others. The ontological framework is based on our current work on ontology specification, where we are investigating Masolo et al.’s Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) extended particularly for space and navigation by incorporating aspects of Smith et al.’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). Our conclusion is that ontology should necessarily play an important role in the design and modelling of cognitive robotic systems: comparability between approaches is improved, modelling gaps and weaknesses are highlighted, re-use of existing formalisations is facilitated, and extensions for interaction with other components, such as natural language systems, are directly supported.
The work reported in this paper was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as project I1-[OntoSpace] of the Transregional Collaborative Research Center SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition. The authors also thank particularly the anonymous reviewers for their extensive corrections and comments, as well as the other members of the SFB/TR 8.
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Bateman, J., Farrar, S. (2005). Modelling Models of Robot Navigation Using Formal Spatial Ontology. In: Freksa, C., Knauff, M., Krieg-Brückner, B., Nebel, B., Barkowsky, T. (eds) Spatial Cognition IV. Reasoning, Action, Interaction. Spatial Cognition 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3343. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32255-9_21
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