A Future for Learning Semantic Models of Man-Made Environments

W. Förstner

Abstract: Deriving semantic 3D models of man-made environments hitherto has not reached the desired maturity which makes human interaction obsolete. Man-made environments play a central role in navigation, city planning, building management systems, disaster management or augmented reality. They are characterised by rich geometric and semantic structures. These cause conceptual problems when learning generic models or when developing automatic acquisition systems. The problems appear to be caused by (1) the incoherence of the models for signal analysis, (2) the type of interplay between discrete and continuous geometric representations, (3) the inefficiency of the interaction between crisp models, such as partonomies and taxonomies, and soft models, mostly having a probabilistic nature, and (4) the vagueness of the used notions in the envisaged application domains. The paper wants to encourage the development and learning of generative models, specifically for man-made objects, to be able to understand, reason about, and explain interpretations.