This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 1997 International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT'97, held in Laurel Highlands, Pennsylvania, USA, in October 1997. The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from a total of 66 submissions. Also included are seven posters. The volume is divided into sections on representations of change, structuring of space, boundaries and gradations, topological models of space, formal models of space, cognitive aspects of spatial acquisition, novel use of spatial information, wayfinding and map interpretation, representations of spatial concepts, new approaches to spatial information.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT'95, held near Vienna, Austria, in September 1995. Spatial Information Theory brings together three fields of research of paramount importance for geographic information systems technology, namely spatial reasoning, representation of space, and human understanding of space. The book contains 36 fully revised papers selected from a total of 78 submissions and gives a comprehensive state-of-the-art report on this exciting multidisciplinary - and highly interdisciplinary - area of research and development.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 3001, held in Morro Bay, CA, USA in September 2001. The 30 revised full papers presented together with three full keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 70 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on geographical ontology and onthologies; qualitative spatio-temporal reasoning; formalizations of human spatial cognition; space, cognition, and information systems; human and machine approaches to navigation; language and space; and cognitive mapping.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2003, held at Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland, in September 2003. The 26 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on ontologies of space and time, reasoning about distances and directions, spatial reasoning - shapes and diagrams, computational approaches, reasoning about regions, vagueness, visualization, and landmarks and wayfinding.
This volume contains the papers presented at the "Conference on Spatial Information Theory", held in Ellicottville, New York in September 2005. COSIT 2005 was the 7th International Conference held under the COSIT name.
This volume collects the papers presented at the European Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT '93) held on the island of Elba, Italy, inSeptember 1993. Spatial information theory includes disciplinary topics and interdisciplinary issues dealing with the conceptualization and formalization of large-scale (geographic) space. It contributes towards a consistent theoretical basis for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Geographic information systems are widely used in administration,planning, and science in many different countries, and for a wide variety ofapplications. Research results which relevant for GIS are distributed between many disciplines and contacts between researchers have been limited. At the same time, the development of GIS has been hinderedby the lack of a sound theoretical base. This conference was intended to help remedies these problems.
As the use of geographical information systems develops apace, a significant strand of research activity is being directed to the fundamental nature of geographic information. This volume contains a collection of essays and discussions on this theme. What is geographic information? What fundamental principles are associated with it? How can
The Conference on Spatial Information Theory – COSIT – grew out of a series of workshops / NATO Advanced Study Institutes / NSF specialist meetings concerned with cognitive and applied aspects of representing large-scale space, particularly geographic space. In these meetings, the need for a well-founded theory of spatial information processing was identified. The COSIT conference series was established in 1993 as a biennial interdisciplinary European conference on the representation and processing of information about large-scale space, after a successful international conference on the topic had been organized by Andrew Frank et al. in Pisa, Italy, in 1992 (frequently referred to as ‘COSIT zero’). After two successful European conferences with strong North-American participation (COSIT ’93, held on the Island of Elba, Italy; COSIT ’95, held in Semmering, Austria), the conference became a truly international enterprise when COSIT ’97 was held in the Laurel Highlands, Pennsylvania, USA. COSIT ’99 will take place in Stade, Germany. All aspects of large-scale space, i. e. spaces too large to be seen from a single vantage point, are addressed in the COSIT conferences. These include spaces of geographic scale, as well as smaller spaces in which humans, animals, or autonomous robots have to find their way around. Spatial information theory also deals with the description of objects, processes, or events in spatial environments and it forms the foundation for the construction of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and for spatial information and communication system design in general.
In this book, new results or developments from different research backgrounds and application fields are put together to provide a wide and useful viewpoint on these headed research problems mentioned above, focused on the motion planning problem of mobile ro-bots. These results cover a large range of the problems that are frequently encountered in the motion planning of mobile robots both in theoretical methods and practical applications including obstacle avoidance methods, navigation and localization techniques, environmental modelling or map building methods, and vision signal processing etc. Different methods such as potential fields, reactive behaviours, neural-fuzzy based methods, motion control methods and so on are studied. Through this book and its references, the reader will definitely be able to get a thorough overview on the current research results for this specific topic in robotics. The book is intended for the readers who are interested and active in the field of robotics and especially for those who want to study and develop their own methods in motion/path planning or control for an intelligent robotic system.
The book deals with the integration of temporal information in Geographic Information Systems. The main purpose of an historical or time-integrative GIS is to reproduce spatio- temporal processes or sequents of events in the real world in the form of a model. The model thus making them accessible for spatial query, analysis and visualization. This volume reflects both theoretical thoughts on the interrelations of space and time, as well as practical examples taken from various fields of application (e.g. business data warehousing, demographics, history and spatial analysis).
