• HDR Defended on :
  • Dec 8, 2011 • IUT de Lens, Amphithéâtre SRC

Abstract

Our research work is based on theoretical and practical studies of qualitative and practical studies of qualitative formalisms for the representation and reasoning about time and space. These studies have led us to study these formalisms under different aspects: constraint resolution, logic and information fusion.

Our work concerning the axiomatization in first order logic of the basic relations of some relations of some qualitative formalisms are described in the first chapter. Our contributions concerning the resolution of the problem of coherence of qualitative constraint networks are presented in the second chapter. We describe in particular studies devoted to the search for treatable classes,the notions of eligible and frozen constraints, the definition of new local coherences, the resolution of the consistency problem with CSP and SAT coding, and the use of tree decompositions in the framework of qualitative constraint networks.

Finally, in the last chapter, we present on the one hand our work on a particular spatio-temporal logic and on the other hand those concerning the problem of merging qualitative constraint networks.