Seminar: Qualitative Shape Descriptions Using Qualitative Spatial Calculi

A/Prof Reinhard Moratz, from The University of Maine, will be visiting The University of Melbourne on Monday, August 28th and will be giving a seminar:

Title: Qualitative Shape Descriptions Using Qualitative Spatial Calculi

When: Monday 28 August, 2pm-3pm

Where: 207 Bouverie St, B120 (Theatre 2)

Abstract:

Qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) abstracts metrical details
of the physical world and enables computers to make predictions about
spatial relations even when precise quantitative information is
unavailable. From a practical viewpoint QSR is an abstraction that
summarizes similar quantitative states into one qualitative
characterization. Recent joint work with my Ph.D. student Christopher
Dorr investigated the use of qualitative spatial representations about
relative direction and distance for shape representation. This new
approach – which in contrast to previous approaches employs both
direction and distance – uniquely enables the generation of prototypical
shapes from abstract representations. Using the conceptual neighborhood
which is an established concept in QSR one can directly establish a
conceptual neighborhood between shapes that translates into a similarity
metric for shapes. Applying this similarity measure to a challenging
computer vision problem yields promising first results.

Bio:
Reinhard Moratz started as Associate Professor of Spatial Information
Science and Engineering at the University of Maine in September 2008.
Prior to his position at the University of Maine he was Assistant
Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany. In 2003 he was a
founding member of the Transregional Collaborative Research Center
SFB/TR8 “Spatial Cognition” of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Reinhard Moratz received his PhD (1997) from the University of Bielefeld
and his Habilitation (2008) in computer science from the University of
Bremen. His research agenda lies in the area of artificial intelligence,
and cognitive engineering for spatial applications. In his research he
uses both formal and empirical methods. Specifically, Reinhard Moratz
works on representing and modeling spatial cognition, and the
integration of such models into spatially aware systems.