Abstract:
Despite their miniature, 0.1-mg brains Cataglyphis ants of the Sahara
desert are particularly impressive navigators. They leave their
subterranean burrows for distances of several hundred metres by winding
their way in a tortuous search for food, and then return in an amazingly
straight line to the starting point of their foraging trip. Their
predominant way of navigation is path integration including a compass
that
is based on skylight (polarization) patterns invisible to man. Path
integration is supplemented by landmark guidance for finally pin-pointing
the goal. In this context, matching of retinotopically fixed panoramic
views ("snapshots") and local vectors accompanying such views are further
components of the ant's navigational toolkit. Behavioural and
neurobiological analyses reveal that in the insect's cockpit - its
brain -
a high-level task is accomplished by the collective interaction of
a number
of low-level modules.
Dr. Ruediger Wehner
Professor and Head of Department
Permanent Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin
Zoologisches Institut
Winterthurerstr. 190
CH-8057 Zuerich
Tel. +41 1 635 4831
FAX +41 1 635 5716
E-Mail rwehner@zool.unizh.ch
Nicola Guarino
The role of identity conditions in ontology design
Friday, 27 August 1999, 09:00-09:45
Abstract:
Current ontologies' upper-level taxonomic structure is often
quite complicated and hard to understand. In this paper I show how
the
theoretical
tools of so-called Formal Ontology, and especially the theory of
identity, can help to formulate cleaner, more general, more rigorous,
and
more understandable upper-level ontologies. I focus in particular on
some
examples of multiple generalization, proposing a way of simplifying
the
domain structure by splitting some concepts according to different
identity
conditions, or by excluding them because of their limited organizational
role.
Nicola Guarino
National Research Council
LADSEB-CNR
Corso Stati Uniti, 4
I-35127 Padova, Italy
phone: +39 O49 8295751
fax: +39 O49 8295763
email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
John S. Gero
Representation and reasoning about shapes: Cognitive and computational
studies in visual reasoning in design
Saturday, 29 August 1999, 09:00-09:45
Abstract:
This paper describes some recent cognitively-based and computationally-
based research on representing and reasoning about shapes. The
cognitive studies are based on protocol analyses of designers and indicate
that visual reasoning in design involves drawings of shapes and their
relations
in the generation of unexpected results. The computational studies
are
concerned with the development of qualitative representations of shapes
that can be used to reason about shapes. Two representations are described:
half-planes and landmark-based qualitative codes. Reasoning using these
representations is presented.
John S. Gero
Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition
Department of Architectural and Design Science
University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia
email: john@arch.usyd.edu.au