Cognitive Space and Spatial Cognition: The SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition

Abstract

Space and time are two of the most fundamental categories any human, animal, or other cognitive agent such as an autonomous robot has to deal with. They need to perceive their environments, make sense of their perceptions, and make interactions as embodied entities with other agents and their environment. The theoretical foundations and practical implications have been investigated from a cognitive perspective (i.e., from an information processing point of view) within the Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition (http://www.sfbtr8.spatial-cognition.de) over the past 12 years jointly by the Universities of Bremen and Freiburg. The research covered fundamental questions: what are the specific requirements of reasoning about space and time, for acting in space, and for any form of interaction including communication in spatio-temporal domains? It has been a success story in all research lines from foundational research to applications of spatial cognition in robotics, interaction and communication. The SFB/TR 8 actually shaped a new research field by extending a previous subfield of cognitive science with its own interdisciplinary techniques.