Patent ID: 11860682
Assignee: XEROX CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 7:
8. A device for generating qualitative constraints that govern a spatio-temporal behavior of a physical system, the device comprising:
at least one processor;
and at least one memory including computer program code;
the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the device to:
specify a topological structure of the physical system in space-time; and
using the topological structure, generate the qualitative constraints in symbolic form, wherein the qualitative constraints may be fed into a qualitative simulation tool comprising a qualitative spatio-temporal model wherein the qualitative spatio-temporal model of the physical system is expressed by topological semantics based on a Tonti diagram in which qualitative states of physical variable are systematically organized as nodes on the Tonti diagram and governing expressions constraining the qualitative states are symbolically expressed as connections between selected nodes on the Tonti diagram.