R3-[Q-Shape] - Research
A Toolbox for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in Applications
SparQ - Spatial Reasoning done Qualitatively
SparQ is a collection of tools for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in applications released as free software under GNU GPL. The goals of SparQ are
- providing reference implementations for spatial calculi from the QSR community
- making specifying and integrating new calculi easy
- providing typical procedures required to apply QSR in a convenient way
- offering a uniform interface that allows straighforward switching between calculi
- being easily integrable into own applications.
SparQ can be run on most POSIX systems such as for example Linux, Mac OS X, or Solaris.
Documentation
A detailed documentation of the recent version of SparQ (V0.7.4) is available in PDF format.
Download
Click here to download sparq-0.7.4.tar.gz
Click here to download a Mac OS X binary release including the SparQ Shell
What's new?
- SparQ and QSR tutorial at Cosit
There will be a SparQ-based tutorial at Cosit 2013 in Scarborough, UK. We are working hard to have a brandnew SparQ version ready by end of August - stay tuned!
- Pritom Rajkhowa and Abhijit Boruah developed a Java GUI for SparQ interaction which they share; thanks guys!
- April 2010
released V0.7.4
- improved algebraic reasoning module
- improved support of 64Bit systems
- December 2009
released V0.7.3.1 - bugfix release to V0.7.3; concerns only the building process, not the functionality
- October 2009
released SparQ Shell for Mac OS X
- January 2009
released V0.7.3 - minor improvements and fixes; added variable support
- November 2008
released V0.7.2 - bug fix release
- January 2008
released V0.7.1
- New features: ternary composition for ternary calculi, algebraic closure using ternary composition
- July, 16th 2007
released V0.7 - major update
- Major change: calculi-dependent automatic recompiling during runtime to increase speed
- Major change: calculi-dependent relation representation
- More precomputation when compiling calculi
- Improved the general heuristics in a-closure
- Improved heuristics in backtracking search
- Introduced algebraic specification
- July 2006
released V0.6 - first 'public' release
Related Publications
Frank Dylla, Till Mossakowski, Thomas Schneider, and Diedrich Wolter. Algebraic Properties of Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Calculi, Proceedings of Cosit 2013, to appear; an according arXiv report isavailable online
Jae Hee Lee, Jochen Renz, and Diedrich Wolter. StarVars -- Effective Reasoning about Relative Direction Information, Proceedings of IJCAI 2013, to appear
Diedrich Wolter. Analyzing Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Calculi using Algebraic Geometry (final draft version), Spatial Cognition and Computation 12(1), pp. 23-52, 2012
Diedrich Wolter and Jan Olliver Wallgrün. Qualitative Spatial Reasoning for Applications: New Challenges and the SparQ Toolbox (final draft version), In: Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representation and Reasoning: Trends and Future Directions, Shyamanta M. Hazarika (eds), 2011
Diedrich Wolter. SparQ - a spatial reasoning toolbox, In: Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Benchmarking of Qualitative Spatial and Temporal Reasoning Systems, 2009
Diedrich Wolter and Lyudmila Moshagen. Algebraic methods for analyzing qualitative spatio-temporal calculi, In: Proceedings of ECAI-Workshop on spatial and temporal reasoning, 2008
Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Lutz Frommberger, Diedrich Wolter, Frank Dylla, and Christian Freksa. A toolbox for qualitative spatial representation and reasoning. In In: T. Barkowsky, M. Knauff, G. Ligozat, & D. Montello (Eds.), Spatial Cognition V: Reasoning, Action, Interaction: International Conference Spatial Cognition 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4387, pp. 39-58. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2007
Frank Dylla, Lutz Frommberger, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, and Diedrich Wolter. SparQ: A toolbox for qualitative spatial representation and reasoning. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Qualitative Constraint Calculi: Application and Integration at KI 2006, Bremen, Germany, June 2006.
Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Lutz Frommberger, Frank Dylla, and Diedrich Wolter. SparQ User Manual V0.6. Technical Report 007-07/2006, Cognitive Systems - SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition, Universität Bremen, July 2006.
Please consult draft versions for overview only, contact us if you cannot access a paper.