Control Mechanisms for Spatial Knowledge Processing in Cognitive / Intelligent Systems, Papers from the 2007 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-07-01, Stanford, California, USA, March 26-28, 2007

Crucial characteristics of cognitive systems, may they be robots, (software) agents, or humans are (a) spatial knowledge processing and (b) mechanisms for control of information processing. Without the former, cognitive systems would not be able to act in as well as reason and communicate about a world which is inherently spatial. Without the latter, all the reasoning faculties and activities of the system would be employed solitarily leading, in the end, to a failure of the system. Consequently, over the last decade(s), there has been a growing interest in the understanding and realization of both aspects in all three types of cognitive systems. Despite the substantial research effort devoted to control mechanisms and spatial knowledge processing as such, control mechanisms for spatial knowledge processing have virtually been neglected.