======================================================================== 2nd WORKSHOP ON THE REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING OF SPATIAL EXPRESSIONS ======================================================================== 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.