Abstract:

As a fundamental spatial relation, the direction relations can describe position information between objects, which has been an important issue for spatial knowledge processing. Conventional researches mainly concern over the relations of simple objects, which restrict spatial relation modeling in further practical and theoretical research. The article focuses on the representation and reasoning models of direction relations of uncertain regions with qualitative methods. Firstly, an uncertain boundary was described using broad boundary model, and the direction relations between uncertain regions were represented with the combinations of basic cardinal direction relations. Moreover, through the representations, the direction relation constraints and satisfaction problem constraints or uncertain regions were defined. And a consistency checking algorithm was proposed for reasoning about the direction relations between uncertain regions, and the computational complexity of this algorithm was also analyzed.

Key words: uncertain regions, board boundary, spatial direction relations, consistency checking