What is space? Is there space when there are objects to occupy it or is there space only when there are no objects to occupy it? Can there be space without objects? These are old philosophical questions that concern the ontology of space in the philosophical sense of ‘ontology’ – what is the nature of space? Cognitive science in general and arti?cial intelligence in particular are less c- cerned with the nature of things than with their mental conceptualizations. In spatial cognition research we address questions like What do we know about space? How is space represented? What are the representational entities? What are the rep- sentational structures? Answers to these questions are described in what is called ontologies in arti?cial intelligence. Different tasks require different knowledge, and different representations of knowledge facilitate different ways of solving problems. In this book, Jan Oliver Wallgrün develops and investigates representational structures to support tasks of autonomous mobile robots, from the acquisition of knowledge to the use of this knowledge for navigation. The research presented is concerned with the robot mapping problem, the pr- lem of building a spatial representation of an environment that is perceived by s- sors that only provide incomplete and uncertain information; this information usually needs to be related to other imprecise or uncertain information. The routes a robot can take can be abstractly described in terms of graphs where alternative routes are represented by alternative branches in these route graphs.

Voronoi diagrams partition space according to the influence certain sites exert on their environment. Since the 17th century, such structures play an important role in many areas like Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Ecology, Economics, Mathematics and Computer Science. They help to describe zones of political influence, to determine the hospital nearest to an accident site, to compute collision-free paths for mobile robots, to reconstruct curves and surfaces from sample points, to refine triangular meshes, and to design location strategies for competing markets.This unique book offers a state-of-the-art view of Voronoi diagrams and their structure, and it provides efficient algorithms towards their computation.Readers with an entry-level background in algorithms can enjoy a guided tour of gently increasing difficulty through a fascinating area. Lecturers might find this volume a welcome source for their courses on computational geometry. Experts are offered a broader view, including many alternative solutions, and up-to-date references to the existing literature; they might benefit in their own research or application development.

This text presents a wide-ranging and rigorous overview of nearest neighbor methods, one of the most important paradigms in machine learning. Now in one self-contained volume, this book systematically covers key statistical, probabilistic, combinatorial and geometric ideas for understanding, analyzing and developing nearest neighbor methods. Gérard Biau is a professor at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris). Luc Devroye is a professor at the School of Computer Science at McGill University (Montreal).

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the International Conference on Advanced Computing, Networking and Security, ADCONS 2011, held in Surathkal, India, in December 2011. The 73 papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 289 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on distributed computing, image processing, pattern recognition, applied algorithms, wireless networking, sensor networks, network infrastructure, cryptography, Web security, and application security.

The International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS 2004) held in Krak ́ ow, Poland, June 6–9, 2004, was a follow-up to the highly successful ICCS 2003 held at two locations, in Melbourne, Australia and St. Petersburg, Russia; ICCS 2002 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and ICCS 2001 in San Francisco, USA. As computational science is still evolving in its quest for subjects of inves- gation and e?cient methods, ICCS 2004 was devised as a forum for scientists from mathematics and computer science, as the basic computing disciplines and application areas, interested in advanced computational methods for physics, chemistry, life sciences, engineering, arts and humanities, as well as computer system vendors and software developers. The main objective of this conference was to discuss problems and solutions in all areas, to identify new issues, to shape future directions of research, and to help users apply various advanced computational techniques. The event harvested recent developments in com- tationalgridsandnextgenerationcomputingsystems,tools,advancednumerical methods, data-driven systems, and novel application ?elds, such as complex - stems, ?nance, econo-physics and population evolution.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, ICAART 2012, held in Vilamoura, Portugal, in February 2012. The 28 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 292 submissions. The papers are organized in two topical sections on artificial intelligence and on agents.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2003, held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2003. The 66 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 165 submissions. The scope of the papers spans the entire range of algorithmics from design and mathematical analysis issues to real-world applications, engineering, and experimental analysis of algorithms.

In the last decade, signi?cant changes have occurred in the ?eld of vehicle motion planning, and for UAVs in particular. UAV motion planning is especially dif?cult due to several complexities not considered by earlier planning strategies: the - creased importance of differential constraints, atmospheric turbulence which makes it impossible to follow a pre-computed plan precisely, uncertainty in the vehicle state, and limited knowledge about the environment due to limited sensor capabilities. These differences have motivated the increased use of feedback and other control engineering techniques for motion planning. The lack of exact algorithms for these problems and dif?culty inherent in characterizing approximation algorithms makes it impractical to determine algorithm time complexity, completeness, and even soundness. This gap has not yet been addressed by statistical characterization of experimental performance of algorithms and benchmarking. Because of this overall lack of knowledge, it is dif?cult to design a guidance system, let alone choose the algorithm. Throughout this paper we keep in mind some of the general characteristics and requirements pertaining to UAVs. A UAV is typically modeled as having velocity and acceleration constraints (and potentially the higher-order differential constraints associated with the equations of motion), and the objective is to guide the vehicle towards a goal through an obstacle ?eld. A UAV guidance problem is typically characterized by a three-dimensional problem space, limited information about the environment, on-board sensors with limited range, speed and acceleration constraints, and uncertainty in vehicle state and sensor data.

Computational Science is the scientific discipline that aims at the development and understanding of new computational methods and techniques to model and simulate complex systems. The area of application includes natural systems - such as biology environ mental and geo-sciences, physics, and chemistry - and synthetic systems such as electronics and financial and economic systems. The discipline is a bridge bet ween 'classical' computer science - logic, complexity, architecture, algorithm- mathematics, and the use of computers in the aforementioned areas. The relevance for society stems from the numerous challenges that exist in the various science and engineering disciplines, which can be tackled by advances made in this field. For instance new models and methods to study environmental issues like the quality of air, water, and soil, and weather and climate predictions through simulations, as well as the simulation-supported development of cars, airplanes, and medical and transport systems etc. Paraphrasing R. Kenway (R.D. Kenway, Contemporary Physics. 1994): 'There is an important message to scientists, politicians, and industrialists: in the future science, the best industrial design and manufacture, the greatest medical progress, and the most accurate environmental monitoring and forecasting will be done by countries that most rapidly exploit the full potential of computational science'. Nowadays we have access to high-end computer architectures and a large range of computing environments, mainly as a consequence of the enormous sti mulus from the various international programs on advanced computing, e.g.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th Latin American Symposium on Theoretical Informatics, LATIN 2014, held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in March/April 2014. The 65 papers presented together with 5 abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 192 submissions. The papers address a variety of topics in theoretical computer science with a certain focus on complexity, computational geometry, graph drawing, automata, computability, algorithms on graphs, algorithms, random structures, complexity on graphs, analytic combinatorics, analytic and enumerative combinatorics, approximation algorithms, analysis of algorithms, computational algebra, applications to bioinformatics, budget problems and algorithms and data structures.