An integrated model for quantitative and qualitative description of spatial direction relations

Abstract

Each of the existing models for direction relations has its advantages and disadvantages, but none of them can meet the five criteria used to evaluate a satisfactory model, i.e. correctness, completeness, efficiency, quantification and qualification. Hence, this paper proposes a new model that integrates the advantages of existing ones using two strategies. First, the method for partitioning direction regions is improved so that the new model is correct, complete and efficient; second, the idea for calculating and describing direction relations in the direction-relation matrix model and the Voronoi-based model is integrated into the new model so that direction relations can be represented both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our experiments show that the model can calculate direction relations between arbitrary object pairs in two-dimensional spaces and the results are acceptable to a majority of people.

Keywords::

• spatial direction relations
• arbitrary objects
• object pairs

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve the quality of this paper.

FundingThe work described in this paper is partially funded by the Natural Science Foundation Committee of China [41371435], partially funded by the National Support Plan in Science and Technology of China [2013BAB05B01] and partially funded by NSERC for PhD candidates, Canada.