Spatial Cognition: Agents between Sensation and Reality

Cognitive agents (specifically humans, animals, and autonomous robots) require abilities to localize themselves in space, to navigate and solve spatial tasks, to communicate about space, and to assist other agents in performing spatial tasks. To this end, cognitive agents employ knowledge about the spatial environment; they require suitable representations of this knowledge as well as approaches to make use of this knowledge for the specific tasks to be performed. In my talk, I will address three areas of research of the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition: (1) the relation between spatial structures in the physical environment and representational structures in mental representations; (2) the relation between mental representations and external representations for reasoning, for communicating, and for assisting cognitive agents in understanding spatial situations; (3) the relation between spatial environments and their external representations in the light of mental concepts. For these three areas of research, I will describe concepts of qualitative spatial reasoning that we employ in the interaction between the different domains involved in spatial reasoning and spatial communication.