R3-[Q-Shape] - Overview

Reasoning about Paths, Shapes, and Configuration

The goal of the R3 project is the development of qualitative high-level representation and reasoning methods for cognitive agents operating in a spatial environment and communicating about space.

We pursue the development of techniques to efficiently and robustly solve complex spatial tasks and aim at advancing formal techniques to real-world problems. In particular, we investigate techniques of qualitative spatial representation and reasoning (spatial logics) to obtain an adequate level of abstraction and effective means for a task at hand. We develop knowledge representations that support a wide range of reasoning tasks ranging from classical inference to navigation, conflict resolution, and beyond.

We complement theoretical research by developing the spatial reasoning toolbox SparQ. We use our robots to study navigation techniques and we are particularly interested in rule-compliant navigation in sea traffic including robotic sailing.