Towards a general theory for qualitative space

Finding ways for defining the complete and sound (physically plausible) set of relationships between spatial objects is a pre-requisite for the development and realization of qualitative representation and reasoning formalisms. Establishing the set of sound relationships is a complicated task especially when complex objects are considered. Hence, current approaches to qualitative representation and reasoning are limited to handling simple spatial objects. In this paper, we extend a constraint-based approach to qualitative representation of topological relationships by introducing general soundness rules. The rules reduce the combinatorial set of relations produced by the method to the complete and physically possible ones. The rules are general and apply to objects of random complexity arid together with the representation and reasoning formalism form a theory for qualitative space.