On Topological Consistency and Realization

Topological relations are important in various tasks of spatial reasoning, scene description and object recognition. The RCC8 spatial constraint language developed by Randell, Cui and Cohn is widely recognized as of particular importance in both the research fields of qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) and geographical information science. Given a network of RCC8 relations, naturally we ask when it is consistent, and if this is the case, can we have a realization in a certain spatial model? This paper gives a direct and simple algorithm for generating realizations of path-consistent networks of RCC8 base relations. As a result, we also show that each consistent network of RCC8 relations has a realization in the digital plane (with either 4- or 8-connections) and in any RCC model. Keywords Qualitative spatial reasoning; Region Connection Calculus; RCC8 constraint language; realization; consistency; path-consistency.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: CONSTRAINTS
• Authors: Sanjiang Li
• Keywords: CONSTRAINTS 2006, Qualitative Spatial Reasoning, Spatial Constraint Language, Spatial Reasoning