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2nd WORKSHOP ON THE REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING OF SPATIAL EXPRESSIONS
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12th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-96)
Budapest, Hungary
WWW
Following the success of the first workshop held at IJCAI-95 in Montreal, the
2nd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Spatial Expressions is
to be held at ECAI-96 in Budapest, Hungary, on either the 12th or 13th August
1996.
Workshop Background
The size, shape, orientation and position of objects can be conveyed using a
wide range of spatial expressions. The semantic treatment of such expressions
presents particular challenges for natural language processing. The meaning
representation used must be capable of distinguishing between fine-grained
sense differences and ambiguities grounded in our experiential and perceptual
structure.
On-going research projects that in part address the problem of representing
and processing spatial expressions include:
o Spatial language for the instruction of semi- and autonomous agents.
o Dialogue understanding using "mental images".
o Interfaces to CAD and multi-media systems, eg. natural language querying
of photographic databases and speech-driven design and assembly.
o Machine translation systems, finding a systematic approach for translating
spatial expressions correctly is notoriously difficult.
o Spatial queries for Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
o Generation of spatial descriptions on the basis of maps, cognitive maps or
other spatial representations.
Workshop Issues
Though here are been many different approaches to the representation
and processing of spatial expressions, most existing computational
characterisations have so far been restricted to particularly narrow problem
domains, usually specific spatial contexts determined by overall system
goals.
To date, artificial intelligence research in this field has rarely taken
advantage of studies of language and spatial cognition carried out by the
cognitive science community. One of the intentions of this workshop is to
bring together researchers from both disciplines in the belief that
artificial intelligence has much to gain from an appreciation of cognitive
theories.
In addition to presenting original research participants will be asked where
possible to address the following questions:
o How does your work draw upon, differ from, refine or extend existing
linguistic, cognitive and artificial intelligence approaches? What are the
limitations and assumptions of your approach?
o How should knowledge about space be represented? What is your underlying
knowledge representation and reasoning formalism and what issues have
motivated your choice?
o How important is the issue of cognitive plausibility?
o How should the lexicon be organised with respect to spatial prepositions
and spatially relevant words? How can multiple meanings for such words be
accommodated?
o The meaning of spatial expressions cannot be addressed in isolation.
Indeed spatial expressions are used in many different physical contexts
and environments. How should the meanings of individual spatially relevant
words be composed during processing to obtain meanings of complex spatial
expressions?
o Object knowledge is generally thought to play an important role in the
interpretation of spatial words especially spatial prepositions. How can
this be realised and are there any other factors which affect the
interpretation of spatially relevant words?
o How language dependent is your approach?
o What are the open questions?
Organizing Committee
Klaus-Peter Gapp (Saarbruecken, Germany)
Amitabha Mukerjee (IIT, Kanpur, India)
Patrick Olivier (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK)
Simone Pribbenow (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Joerg Schirra (University of Bremen, Germany)
Laure Vieu (IRIT, Toulouse, France)
Workshop Format and Attendance Requirements
It is specifically intended that this workshop will be highly interactive.
In addition to conventional paper presentations, attendees may also be
required to deliver commentaries on other papers, coordinate group discussion
and contribute to key issue debates.
Between 30 and 40 people will attend the workshop. All workshop participants
are expected to register for the main ECAI conference.
SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES: FULL PAPERS AND STATEMENTS OF INTEREST
To facilitate the organisation of the workshop there will be two classes of
submission: (1) a full paper or (2) a statement of interest.
Papers must be a maximum of 15 pages, each page having no more than 43 lines
with 12 point type. Title, abstract, figures and references must be included
within this limit.
Statements of interest must be at most 4 pages long.
Electronic submission is strongly encouraged (preferably postscript or
self-contained LaTeX), submissions should be made to plo@aber.ac.uk. For
hard copy submissions double sided printing is preferred and four copies
should be mailed to the following address:
Patrick Olivier
Centre for Intelligent Systems
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Dyfed, SY23 3DB, UK
E-mail: plo@aber.ac.uk
Tel: +44 1970622447
Fax: +44 1970622455
DEADLINES
Submission deadline: 11th March 1996
Notification of acceptance: 8th April 1996
Camera ready copy due: 29th April 1996
PUBLICATION
Accepted papers and statements of interest will be published in the workshop
notes/preprints by ECAI. Revised versions of the Montreal workshop's papers
are in the process of being published as a book by Laurence Erlbaum. If there
is sufficient interest this year, we hope to do the same again.
Abstracts from the first workshop's papers.