Qualitative spatial reasoning about objects in motion: application to physics problem solving

Describes an ongoing project to develop a theory of qualitative spatial reasoning which merges a simple, intuitive description of the spatial extent, relative position, and orientation of objects with existing methods for qualitative reasoning about dynamically changing worlds. We are applying our theories within a system for problem solving about the magnetic fields domain. We describe methods for integrating diagram and test input to a problem solver, methods of abstraction for modeling the spatial extents of objects, and a method for modeling spatial relations between objects through inequalities on extremal points which directly allows reasoning about the effects of translational motion