CHAPTER 10

Space

Many instances of commonsense reasoning involve space. In this chapter, we present two event calculus axiomatizations of space: relational space and metric space. We describe how these axiomatizations can be used to solve some sample problems. A closely related issue that we consider is object identity: Two objects observed at different times and locations in space may or may not be the same object.

10.1 Relational Space

In the commonsense world, objects stand in various spatial relations to other objects. For example, a pencil is in a jar, a person is in a room, a person is holding a book, a glass is on a table, or a person is wearing a shirt. A relational space consists of a set of objects and a binary relation on the set. ...

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