Skip to main content

Interpreting Route Instructions as Qualitative Spatial Actions

  • Conference paper
Spatial Cognition V Reasoning, Action, Interaction (Spatial Cognition 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4387))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In this paper we motivate the use of qualitative spatial actions as the fundamental unit in processing user route instructions. The spatial action model has been motivated by an analysis of empirical studies in human-robot interaction on the navigation task, and can be interpreted as a conceptual representation of the spatial action to be performed by the agent in their navigation space. Furthermore, we sketch out two distinct models of interpretation for these actions in cognitive robotics. In the first, the actions are related to a formalized conceptual user modeling of navigation space, while in the second the actions are interpreted as fuzzy operations on a voronoi graph. Moreover, we show how this action model allows us to better capture the points at which user route instructions become out of alignment with a robot’s knowledge of the environment through a number of examples.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Allen, J.F.: Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals. CACM 26(11), 832–843 (1983)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Bugmann, G., Klein, E., Lauria, S., Kyriacou, T.: Corpus-Based Robotics: A Route Instruction Example. In: Proceedings of IAS-8 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Chronis, G., Skubic, M.: Robot navigation using qualitative landmark states from sketched route maps. In: Proceeding of the IEEE 2004 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1530–1535. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cohn, A.G., Bennett, B., Gooday, J., Gotts, N.M.: Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning with the region connection calculus. Ceoinformatics 1, 1–44 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Denis, M.: The description of routes: A cognitive approach to the production of spatial discourse. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 16, 409–458 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Fischer, K.: What Computer Talk Is and Is not: Human-Computer Conversation as Intercultural Communication. Computational Linguistics 17 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Freksa, C.: Qualitative spatial reasoning. In: Mark, D.M., Frank, A.U. (eds.) Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Freksa, C.: Using orientation information for qualitative spatial reasoning. In: Frank, A.U., Formentini, U., Campari, I. (eds.) Theories and Methods of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Space. LNCS, vol. 639, pp. 162–178. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Krieg-Brückner, B., Frese, U., Lüttich, K., Mandel, C., Mossakowski, T., Ross, R.J.: Specification of route graphs via an ontology. In: Freksa, C., Knauff, M., Krieg-Brückner, B., Nebel, B., Barkowsky, T. (eds.) Spatial Cognition IV. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3343, pp. 989–995. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Krieg-Brückner, B., Shi, H.: Orientation calculi and route graphs: Towards semantic representations for route descriptions. In: Raubal, M., Miller, H.J., Frank, A.U., Goodchild, M.F. (eds.) GIScience 2006. LNCS, vol. 4197, Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Kuipers, B.: The spatial semantic hierarchy. Artificial Intelligence 119, 191–233 (2000)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Lauria, S., Bugmann, G., Kyriacou, T.: Training personal robots using natural language instruction. IEEE Intelligent Systems 16(3), 38–45 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Lauria, S., Kyriacou, T., Bugmann, G., Bos, J., Klein, E.: Converting natural language route instructions into robot executable procedures. In: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Workshop on Human and Robot Interactive Communication, pp. 223–228. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. MacMahon, M.: A framework for unterstanding verbal route instructions. In: Proceedings of AAAI Fall Symposium on the Intersection of Cognitive Science and Robotics: From Interfaces to Intelligence (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Nijenhuis, A., Wilf, H.: Combinatorial Algorithms. Academic Press, London (1978)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  16. Reason, J.: Human Error. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1990)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  17. Renz, J., Mitra, D.: Qualitative direction calculi with arbitrary granularity. In: Zhang, C., W. Guesgen, H., Yeap, W.-K. (eds.) PRICAI 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3157, pp. 65–74. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Shi, H., Tenbrink, T.: Telling rolland where to go: Hri dialogues on route navigation. In: WoSLaD Workshop on Spatial Language and Dialogue (October 23-25, 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Skubic, M., Matasakis, P., Forrester, B., Chronis, G.: Extracting navigation states from a hand-drawn map. In: Proceeding of the IEEE 2001 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Talmy, L.: How language structures space. In: Pick, H.L., Acredolo, L.P. (eds.) Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research and Application (1983)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Tenbrink, T.: Identifying objects in english and german: Empirical investigations of spatial contrastive reference. In: WoSLaD Workshop on Spatial Language and Dialogue (October 23-25, 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Tenbrink, T.: Identifying objects on the basis of spatial contrast: an empirical study. In: Freksa, C., Knauff, M., Krieg-Brückner, B., Nebel, B., Barkowsky, T. (eds.) Spatial Cognition IV: Reasoning, Action, Interaction. International Conference Spatial Cognition 2004, Frauenchiemsee, Germany, October 2004, pp. 124–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Theobalt, C., Bos, J., Chapman, T., Espinosa-Romero, A.: Talking to godot: Dialogue with a mobile robot. In: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots & Systems, pp. 1338–1343. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Thrun, S.: Robotics mapping a survey. In: Lakemeyer, G., Nebel, B. (eds.) Exploring Artificial Intelligence in the New Millenium, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Tversky, B.: Structures of mental spaces – how people think about space. Environment and Behavior 35(1), 66–80 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Tversky, B., Lee, P.: How space structures language. In: Freksa, C., Habel, C., Wender, K.F. (eds.) Spatial Cognition. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1404, pp. 157–175. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Werner, S., Krieg-Brückner, B., Hermann, T.: Modelling navigational knowledge by route graphs. In: Habel, C., Brauer, W., Freksa, C., Wender, K.F. (eds.) Spatial Cognition II. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1849, pp. 259–316. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Zimmermann, K., Freksa, C.: Qualitative spatial reasoning using orientation, distance, and path knowledge. Applied Intelligence 6, 49–58 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Shi, H., Mandel, C., Ross, R.J. (2007). Interpreting Route Instructions as Qualitative Spatial Actions. In: Barkowsky, T., Knauff, M., Ligozat, G., Montello, D.R. (eds) Spatial Cognition V Reasoning, Action, Interaction. Spatial Cognition 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4387. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75666-8_19

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75666-8_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75665-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75666-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics