A MEREOLOGICAL THEORY OF FRAMES OF REFERENCE
Thomas Bittner · International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools · 2004
In this paper a mereological theory of frames of reference is presented. It shows that mereology extended by the notion of granularity and approximation is sufficient to provide a theory for location based features of frames of reference. More complex theories, taking also into account orientation and metric properties can be built as extensions of the presented theory. In order to take the hierarchical organization of frames of reference into account we introduce the notion of stratified approximation to facilitate transformations between different levels of granularity. This paper shows that the ontological grounding of the theory of frames of reference into mereology allows us to give a clear semantics to the notion 'degree of parthood' which is central to the notion of approximation. It also shows how epistemic aspects which affect the use of frames of reference help us to understand the feature of epistemic vagueness and the way it affects the notions of approximation and of degree of parthood.