Reinhard Moratz

Reinhard Moratz
Born	Herford, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation(s)	Science educator, academic and researcher
Academic background
Education	Bachelor in Informatics Master in Informatics Doctoral studies in Informatics
Alma mater	University of Hamburg Bielefeld University
Thesis	Hybrid neural and semantic network based scene interpretation of video streams
Academic work
Institutions	University of Münster

Reinhard Moratz is a German science educator, academic and researcher. He is Ausserplanmässiger Professor at the University of Münster’s Institute for Geoinformatics. He has worked on spatial cognition and reasoning, qualitative theories of low-dimensional entities like straight line segments and oriented points, artificial intelligence and specifically the OPRA calculus. His research is based on computational models that account for the varying reference frames used in giving verbal instructions about navigation.

Moratz has published various research papers and is the author of Visuelle Objekterkennung als kognitive Simulation and co-editor of the conference proceedings of the Conference on Spatial Information Theory 2011 (COSIT 2011). Moratz’s work has been published in Artificial Intelligence. He is a former member of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA).

Education

Moratz completed his Bachelor and Master in Informatics from the University of Hamburg. He then received Doctoral degree in the same field from Bielefeld University.

Career

Moratz started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at University of Bremen in 2001. He worked in the industry prior to receiving his Habilitation degree in Computer Science in 2008. Moratz then moved to USA and was appointed as Associate Professor at University of Maine’s College of Engineering. He was also selected as a Director of the Human Robot Interaction Laboratory at the University. Parallel to this appointment, he became member of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA). In 2017, Moratz resigned from his positions at the University of Maine and returned to Germany where he was appointed as Ausserplanmässiger Professor at the University of Münster’s Institute for Geo-informatics in 2018.

Career

Moratz started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at University of Bremen in 2001. He worked on gaining industry experience prior to receiving his Habilitation degree in Computer Science in 2008. Moratz then moved to USA and was appointed as Associate Professor at University of Maine’s College of Engineering. He was also selected as a Director of the Human Robot Interaction Laboratory at the University. Parallel to this appointment, he became member of the National Center of Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA).

In 2017, Moratz resigned from his positions at University of Maine and returned to Germany where he was appointed as Ausserplanmässiger Professor at the University of Münster’s Institute for Geo-informatics in 2018.

Research

Moratz’s research is primarily focused on the spatial application of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He uses both formal and empirical methods to work on representing and modeling spatial cognition, and studying the integration of such models in spatially aware systems. His major scientific contributions include building bridges between calculi for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning (QSR) and human natural language; and between entities of QSR calculi and perceived objects.

Compatibility of QSR calculi and human linguistic expressions

Moratz investigated spatial communication in linguistic human-robot interaction and found that linguistic constituents can be successfully mapped onto projective relations of positional QSR calculi. He designed a new calculi with finer distinctions regarding the constraint-based spatial reasoning. His work combines qualitative spatial and linguistic knowledge and has applications in the better use of natural human instructions and spatial context information in the study of human-robot interaction. Moratz’s research also has QSR applications in ontologies. He worked on enabling spontaneous references to objects in human-robot interactions. Moratz presented an empirically based design of robotic system that applied a computational model for the identification of objects based on spatial reference systems. The efficiency evaluation by linguistic analysis pointed to a variability in speaker’s spontaneous strategies.

Relation between entities of QSR calculi and perceived objects

Moratz has also conducted research on the relation between QSR calculus entities and perceived objects. He worked on identifying the real world objects that corresponded to spatial entities related to QSR calculi. He also conducted research on methods for detecting these real world objects through an automatic perception. His approach for function-based object recognition contributed to the link between sensorically registered object features and entities to reason about, in QSR calculi. His function-based object recognition uses the sensorically accessible function that is offered by constructed objects. Moratz’s research indicates that certain spatial invariants can be used to detect meaningful high-level object classes, as object shape is typically determined by object function.

Moratz applied the flexible and generalizable knowledge about time and space to his research about innovative, context aware user friendly computational systems. His research is centered on the development of a unified theory for the formal representation of spatial knowledge. Moratz’s work also has applications in the fields of mobile service robots, Geographic Information Systems, smart items, semantic technologies and location-based services, among others.

Bibliography

Books

• Visuelle Objekterkennung als kognitive Simulation(1997) ISBN 978-3898381741
• Spatial Information Theory: 10th International Conference, COSIT 2011, Belfast, ME, USA (2011) ISBN 9783642231957

Selected Articles

• Moratz, R., Ragni, M.: Qualitative Spatial Reasoning about Relative Point Position, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Volume 19, Issue 1, pages 75-98, 2008.
• Moratz, R., Tenbrink, T.: Spatial Reference in Linguistic Human-Robot Interaction: Iterative, Empirically Supported Development of a Model of Projective Relations, Spatial Cognition and Computation, 6:1, pages 63-107, 2006.
• Mossakowski, T., Moratz, R.: Qualitative Reasoning about Relative Direction of Oriented Points, Artificial Intelligence Journal, Volumes 180-181, pages 34-45, 2012.
• Moratz, R., Wallgruen, J.O.: Qualitative Spatial Reasoning with Augmented Points: Extending the Cardinal Direction Calculus with a Local Distance Concept, Journal of Spatial Information Science, Volume 5, pages 1-30, 2013.
• Moratz, R., Luecke, D., Mossakowski, T.: A Condensed Semantics for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning about Oriented Straight Line Segments, Artificial Intelligence Journal, Volume 175, Issue 16-17, pages 2099-2127, 2011.