Spatial reasoning for intelligent action

Prof. Christian Freksa (Cognitive Systems, University of Bremen, Germany)

DATE: 2009-10-30
TIME: 14:00:00 - 15:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU

ABSTRACT:
In this talk, I will compare computer science / informatics approaches to understanding and problem solving with cognitive approaches. In particular, I will explore the role of abstraction in informatics and relate it to the role of physical or semantic grounding in cognition. I will address the significance of spatial and temporal structures for human perception and reasoning and I will discuss how artificial systems may exploit these structures in a similarly effective fashion. I will introduce different types of neighborhood relations that can be used to deal with various abilities and requirements of cognitive systems. I will use the term 'computing space' to illustrate how spatial structures can effortlessly generate results that otherwise require more or less expensive computational processing. I will suggest that we may construct 'spatial computers' that are particularly suitable and efficient for solving spatio-temporal problems but may be used for abstract problem solving as well.

BIO:
Christian Freksa is a Professor of Cognitive Systems in the Department of Informatics at the University of Bremen (Germany) and Director of the Transregional Collaborative Spatial Cognition Research Center SFB/TR 8 at the Universities of Bremen and Freiburg. His research concerns representation and reasoning with incomplete, imprecise, lean, coarse, approximate, fuzzy, and conflicting knowledge about physical environments. Particular emphasis is on the development of 'cognitively adequate' qualitative approaches in spatial and temporal domains. His interdisciplinary research group employs formal and computational approaches to knowledge representation, designs computer models for simulation studies, and carries out autonomous robotics experiments using diverse intelligent technologies. Christian Freksa received a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from UC Berkeley. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and started the AI/cognition group at TU Munich. In 1991 he became Professor for artificial intelligence / cognitive science at the University of Hamburg where he directed a national priority program on spatial cognition before he moved to the University of Bremen to establish the SFB/TR 8. Christian Freksa is an ECCAI Fellow, a member of the Advisory Board of the journal Spatial Cognition and Computation, and a member of the Cosit steering committee

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