Spatio-temporal representation for multi-dimensional occlusion relation

Occlusion relation is the topological relation between the images of two bodies from a viewpoint. Qualitative representation of occlusion relation has been investigated in qualitative spatial reasoning. This research is important for computer vision and robot navigation. The previous models such as LOS and ROC-20 are all based on RCC (the famous topological theory). But those models couldn´t support abstract objects such as point and line which are very common in real applications. To deal with this, multi-dimensional spatial occlusion relation (MSO) is put forward. The foundation of MSO is MRCC which is the multi-dimensional extension of RCC. So MSO is suitable for both real and abstract objects. The conception neighborhood and composition of MSO is given. Finally MSO is extended to spatio-temporal relation by adding time feature. MSO is an appropriate frame to express spatio-temporal knowledge.