Skip to main content

A Probabilistic Framework for Object Descriptions in Indoor Route Instructions

  • Conference paper
Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8116))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Automatically generated route instructions are common in modern cars, but for indoor environments, such systems hardly exist, possibly due to the fundamental difference of street networks and indoor environments. Indoor environments often lack the clear decision points present in street networks and involve a spatially complex layout. Therefore, good route instructions for indoor environments should provide context by relating instructions to environmental features—they need to describe and locate objects. This paper is concerned with automatic generation of in-advance route instructions for indoor scenarios. Motivated by empirical research, we propose a probabilistic framework for generating referring expressions using vague properties and graded models of spatial relations. We discuss the relevance of this framework for generating indoor route instructions and demonstrate the appropriateness of this approach in case studies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Allen, G.: From knowledge to words to wayfinding: Issues in the production and comprehension of route directions. In: Hirtle, S.C., Frank, A.U. (eds.) COSIT 1997. LNCS, vol. 1329, pp. 363–372. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Barclay, M., Galton, A.: An influence model for reference object selection in spatially locative phrases. In: Freksa, C., Newcombe, N.S., Gärdenfors, P., Wölfl, S. (eds.) Spatial Cognition VI. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5248, pp. 216–232. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Caduff, D., Timpf, S.: On the assessment of landmark salience for human navigation. Cognitive Processing 9, 249–267 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, L.A., Regier, T., Covey, E.: Defining spatial relations: Reconciling axis and vector representations. In: van der Zee, E., Slack, J. (eds.) Representing Direction in Language and Space, pp. 111–131. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, L.A., Hölscher, C., Shipley, T.F., Dalton, R.C.: Getting lost in buildings. Current Directions in Psychological Science 19(5), 284–289 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson-Radvansky, L.A., Irwin, D.E.: Reference frame activation during spatial term assignment. Journal of Memory and Language 33(5), 646–671 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cuayáhuitl, H., Dethlefs, N., Richter, K.F., Tenbrink, T., Bateman, J.: A dialogue system for indoor wayfinding using text-based natural language. IJCLA 1(1-2), 285–304 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Dale, R., Haddock, N.: Generating referring expressions involving relations. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Berlin, Germany (April 1991)

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniel, M.P., Denis, M.: Spatial descriptions as navigational aids: A cognitive analysis of route directions. Kognitionswissenschaft 7, 45–52 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Deemter, K.: Generating referring expressions that involve gradable properties. Computational Linguistics 32(2), 195–222 (2006)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Denis, M.: The description of routes: A cognitive approach to the production of spatial discourse. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 16(4), 409–458 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Denis, M., Pazzaglia, F., Cornoldi, C., Bertolo, L.: Spatial discourse and navigation: an analysis of route directions in the city of venice. Applied Cognitive Psychology 13(2), 145–174 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galton, A.P., Barclay, M.: A scene corpus for training and testing spatial communication systems. In: Proceedings of the AISB 2008 Symposium on Multimodal Output Generation (MOG 2008), pp. 26–29 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gapp, K.-P.: Object localization: Selection of optimal reference objects. In: Kuhn, W., Frank, A.U. (eds.) COSIT 1995. LNCS, vol. 988, pp. 519–536. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gapp, K.-P.: An empirically validated model for computing spatial relations. In: Wachsmuth, I., Brauer, W., Rollinger, C.-R. (eds.) KI 1995. LNCS, vol. 981, Springer, Heidelberg (1995b)

    Google Scholar 

  • Garoufi, K., Koller, A.: Automated planning for situated natural language generation. In: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Garoufi, K., Koller, A.: Combining symbolic and corpus-based approaches for the generation of successful referring expressions. In: Proceedings of the 13th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gartner, G., Frank, A., Retscher, G.: Pedestrian navigation system in mixed indoor/outdoor environment - the navio project. In: CORP: 9th International Symposion on Information and Communication Technologies in Urban and Spatial Planning and Impacts of ICT on Physical Space. TU-Vienna (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hermann, T., Deutsch, W.: Psychologie der Objektbenennung. Huber, Bern (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hölscher, C., Meilinger, T., Vrachliotis, G., Brösamle, M., Knauff, M.: Up the down staircase: Wayfinding strategies in multi-level buildings. Journal of Environmental Psychology 26, 284–299 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelleher, J.D., Kruijff, G.-J.M.: A context-dependent algorithm for generating locative expressions in physically situated environments. In: Mellish, C., Reiter, E., Jokinen, K., Wilcock, G. (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation, SIGGEN. ACL (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelleher, J.D., Kruijff, G.-J.M.: Incremental generation of spatial referring expressions in situated dialog. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Linguistics and the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, ACL-44, pp. 1041–1048. Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  • Klippel, A., Hansen, S., Richter, K.F., Winter, S.: Urban granularities—a data structure for cognitively ergonomic route directions. GeoInformatica, 223–247 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Krahmer, E., van Deemter, K.: Computational generation of referring expressions: A survey. Computational Linguistics 38(1), 173–218 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mainwaring, S.D., Tversky, B., Ohgishi, M., Schiano, D.J.: Descriptions of simple spatial scenes in english and japanese. Spatial Cognition and Computation 3(1), 3–42 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mangold, R., Pobel, R.: Informativeness and instrumentality in referential communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 7(3-4), 181–191 (1988)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mast, V., Jian, C., Zhekova, D.: Elaborate descriptive information in indoor route instructions. In: Miyake, N., Peebles, D., Cooper, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, Austin (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Moratz, R., Tenbrink, T.: Spatial reference in linguistic human-robot interaction: Iterative, empirically supported development of a model of projective relations. Spatial Cognition and Computation 6(1), 63–106 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, D.R.: Language and thought: Aspects of a cognitive theory of semantics. Psychological Review 77(4), 257–273 (1970)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, D.R., Ford, W.: The elaboration of the noun phrase in children’s description of objects. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 19, 371–382 (1975)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pechmann, T.: Ăśberspezifizierung und Betonung in referentieller Kommunikation. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Mannheim (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  • Peponis, J., Zimring, C., Choi, Y.K.: Finding the building in wayfinding. Environment and Behavior 22(5), 555–590 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pobel, R., Grosser, C., Mangold, R., Hermann, T.: Zum EinfluĂź hörerseitiger Wahrnehmungsbedingungen auf die Ăśberspezifikation von Objektbenennungen. Tech. rep., Forschergruppe “Sprechen und Sprachverstehen im sozialen Kontext” Universität Mannheim (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  • Presson, C.C., Montello, D.R.: Points of reference in spatial cognition: Stalking the elusive landmark. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 6(4), 378–381 (1988)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raubal, M.: Formalizing conceptual spaces. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2004), vol. 114, pp. 153–164 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Raubal, M., Winter, S.: Enriching wayfinding instructions with local landmarks. In: Egenhofer, M., Mark, D.M. (eds.) GIScience 2002. LNCS, vol. 2478, pp. 243–259. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Richter, K.-F.: Context-Specific Route Directions—Generation of Cognitively Motivated Wayfinding Instructions, diski edn., vol. 314. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • RĂĽetschi, U.J.: Wayfinding in Scene Space: Modelling Transfers in Public Transport. phd-thesis, University of ZĂĽrich (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Schuldes, S., Boland, K., Roth, M., Strube, M., Krömker, S., Frank, A.: Modeling spatial knowledge for generating verbal and visual route directions. In: König, A., Dengel, A., Hinkelmann, K., Kise, K., Howlett, R.J., Jain, L.C. (eds.) KES 2011, Part IV. LNCS, vol. 6884, pp. 366–377. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tenbrink, T.: Identifying objects on the basis of spatial contrast: An empirical study. In: Freksa, C., Knauff, M., Krieg-BrĂĽckner, B., Nebel, B., Barkowsky, T. (eds.) Spatial Cognition IV. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3343, pp. 124–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tenbrink, T.: Relevance in spatial navigation and communication. In: Stachniss, C., Schill, K., Uttal, D. (eds.) Spatial Cognition 2012. LNCS, vol. 7463, pp. 358–377. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Vorwerg, C., Tenbrink, T.: Discourse factors influencing spatial descriptions in english and german. In: Barkowsky, T., Knauff, M., Ligozat, G., Montello, D.R. (eds.) Spatial Cognition 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4387, pp. 470–488. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Mast, V., Wolter, D. (2013). A Probabilistic Framework for Object Descriptions in Indoor Route Instructions. In: Tenbrink, T., Stell, J., Galton, A., Wood, Z. (eds) Spatial Information Theory. COSIT 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8116. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01790-7_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01790-7_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-01789-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-01790-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics