The Role of Context in Spatial Region Identification

Representing and reasoning about spatial terms is an essential ability for cognitive systems interacting with humans in a shared environment. Consider an agent asked to remain “in the safe zone” during a military engagement. The size, shape, and location of this area depends on the capabilities of the agent, other agents in the scene, and the constraints imposed by the environment. We call these types of regions context-dependent spatial regions (CDSRs) due to the context-dependent nature of their extent. We claim that understanding these regions requires integrating semantic and geometric knowledge about a dynamic environment as well as understanding how task-specific information influences spatial interpretation. We report the results of a human study conducted to explore how people interpret three types of CDSRs and discuss the implications for developing cognitive systems with this ability.