Qualitative reasoning about relative direction of oriented points (Q420830)

An oriented point consists of a point located in the plane and an orientation, that is an angle \(0 \leqslant \phi < 2\pi\). Oriented points can be visualized as arrows of a fixed length each having a specified starting point. In qualitative spatial reasoning these entities are used to model the instantaneous position and current direction of moving objects. The \(\mathcal{OPRA}_m\) calculus consists of relations describing the qualitative relationships between oriented points. The granularity parameter \(m\) indicates a division of space into \(2m\) sectors originating at each point. The paper presents a new algorithm for computing the composition table for the calculus for arbitrary \(m\). This algorithm is very significantly simpler than the previously available one. The paper proves the correctness of the algorithm and also provides a useful survey of the applications of the \(\mathcal{OPRA}_m\) calculus.