Project Name (3Z1)
Spatial Cognition: I1-[OntoSpace] (3Z2)
Summary (3Z3)
This project has the primary goal of developing a toolbox of ontology-based methods suitable for supporting natural language interaction and technology re-use within a spatial cognition project. The methods developed will be motivated by detailed empirical investigations of the actual communicative strategies of negotiation employed by users of robotic systems. (3Z4)
A key component of OntoSpace will be a linguistically motivated ontology, an account of the world, a conceptualization of the categories and relations, motivated according to linguistic semantic criteria. A linguistic ontology can be constructed on the same formal level as an ontology motivated by realist or general cognitive principles. The elements of a linguistic ontology do not, however, represent entities in the real world or general language-neutral concepts. A linguistic ontology is an account of how the grammar and/or semantics of a particular natural language carves up the world. (3Z5)
Recently, the I1-OntoSpace has converted the Generalized Upper Model, to OWL using Protege. It has been transformed from the original Loom document. (3Z6)
Homepage (3Z7)
Click here for our project homepage. (3Z8)
Funding (optional) (3Z9)
The OntoSpace project is being conducted as a part of the interdisciplinary Transregional Collaborative Research Center on Spatial Cognition at the University of Bremen in Bremen, Germany. The Center was established by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on 01 January 2003 at the Universities Bremen and Freiburg and is the 8th Transregional Special Research Project (SFB/TR8) funded by the DFG. (3ZA)
Description of OntoSpace (3ZB)
Natural language is an essential mode of interaction between users and sophisticated spatially-aware systems such as mobile assistance robots. Providing suitably sophisticated natural language capabilities for ever more complex interaction scenarios is a major problem. An important contributing factor is the lack of appropriate modularizations of the technical components involved in complete systems that combine spatial and linguistic capabilities. Such interaction needs to be as natural and non-intrusive as possible in order to support the widest possible range of potential users, and so sophisticated accounts are required. Most of the features that make interaction natural still present substantial challenges for dialog systems and solutions are not to be found within single research areas. One particularly effective strategy for modularization is the adoption of linguistically motivated ontologies that mediate between domain/application knowledge and Human Language Technology (HLT) components. But current strategies for ontology mediation exhibit a rigidity that is inappropriate for the relationships observed between domain and linguistic knowledge in real interactions. Here, a negotiation of mediation within conversational interaction appears crucial both for ontology design and for achieving inter-operability. (3ZC)
The results of these experiments will feed into the formalization of inter-ontology mappings. The project will contribute to the further development of emerging standards in ontological engineering, their application in the management of natural language, and the development of ontological modules involving spatial representations for mobile robots. It will also use the ontology mediation strategy to overcome a persistent lack of interaction between spatial system design, robotic interaction, etc. and HLT. This has limited both the wider re-usability of important research results concerning the natural language analysis and generation of spatial relations, including fine-grained semantics for spatial expressions, route description planning and understanding, resource-adaptive generation, etc. (3ZD)