OntoScene, A Logic-based Scene Interpreter: Implementation and Application in the Rock Art Domain

TL;DR

OntoScene is a logic-based framework that interprets visual scenes using ontologies and Prolog, demonstrated on prehistoric rock art to understand scene semantics and spatial relations.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, ontology-driven scene interpretation system combining formal knowledge representation with rule-based reasoning, applicable to complex visual domains.

Findings

Successfully applied to prehistoric rock art interpretation

Modular and interoperable with multiagent systems

Enables complex scene semantics understanding

Abstract

We present OntoScene, a framework aimed at understanding the semantics of visual scenes starting from the semantics of their elements and the spatial relations holding between them. OntoScene exploits ontologies for representing knowledge and Prolog for specifying the interpretation rules that domain experts may adopt, and for implementing the SceneInterpreter engine. Ontologies allow the designer to formalize the domain in a reusable way, and make the system modular and interoperable with existing multiagent systems, while Prolog provides a solid basis to define complex rules of interpretation in a way that can be affordable even for people with no background in Computational Logics. The domain selected for experimenting OntoScene is that of prehistoric rock art, which provides us with a fascinating and challenging testbed. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)