multi-user multi-touch table, a large vertical white-
board, individual graphics tablets and interactive vo-
cal devices. The middleware is a multi-agent sys-
tem which provides ample extensibility and stability
to programmers when building applications for this
interactive environment. This multi-agent architec-
ture allows for easy integration of voice-controlled
personal assistant agents which can perform tasks for
the users around the interactive tabletop. Integrating
these personal assistant agents, is a matter of design-
ing a protocol for communication with these agents
with the middleware.
To help designing the TATIN-PIC platform (Jones
et al., 2011; Moulin et al., 2011), we defined an on-
tology hereafter referred as OntoTATIN-PIC. It is pri-
marily aimed at helping the design team composed
of multidisciplinary researchers. It is provided as
a means to reduce the conceptual complexity of the
TATIN-PIC project. Indeed, one must account both
for the design projects done collaboratively by the de-
sign team, and for the platform itself. Concepts re-
lated to the project include project phases, individ-
ual and collective actions, designed artefact, used re-
sources, or team members’ roles. Concepts related
to the platform include all newly created objects, and
all actions allowed by the system. A second objec-
tive of OntoTATIN-PIC is to provide software agents
with the conceptual resources allowing them to build
a model of the on-going projects, which increases
their supporting capacities.
Because the ontology spreads across a vast do-
main, we propose to build it using a multi-level and
multi-component approach. Thus, OntoTATIN-PIC is
structured inline with the well known DOLCE-CORE
ontology in its more recent version (Borgo and Ma-
solo, 2009; Masolo, 2010), adding modules to de-
scribe sub-domains like actions or documents. To let
OntoTATIN-PIC answer the requirements, two ver-
sions of it have been designed using the OntoSpec
method (Kassel, 2005): (i) an informal specification
using the formalism of the OntoSpec method, used as
a semantic reference for the project team; and (ii) an
implementation using the MOSS formalism (MOSS,
2000), used by the software agents of the platform.
The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss
the content of the ontology and its purposes. Sec-
tion 2 summarizes the ontological framework; Sec-
tion 3 describes some resources used for defining
OntoTATIN-PIC, focusing on virtual objects appear-
ing on the graphics surface and on the actions needed
to manipulate them; Section 4 presents how the on-
tology is exploited; the conclusion presents ongoing
work meant to complement the ontology and improve
supporting features.
2 ONTOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
We selected DOLCE-CORE (Borgo and Masolo,
2009; Masolo, 2010), to structure OntoTATIN-PIC.
This section summarizes the structuring principles of
DOLCE-CORE and presents two extensions required
to define OntoTATIN-PIC: (i) an extension to the do-
main of actions; and (ii) an extension to the domain
of entities bearing information.
2.1 Main Categories
DOLCE-CORE distinguishes four main categories of
concrete entities having spatio-temporal extensions
(Fig. 2).
Objects and Events are distinguished according to
the way they are located in space and time: Objects,
in particular physical objects like a person or a smart-
phone, are mainly linked to space, whilst Events are
mainly linked to time. Objects obtain a temporal posi-
tion through Events to which they participate. In par-
ticular Objects participate in their life, an Event with a
temporal extension. Conversely, Events obtain a spa-
tial location through Objects that generate them, e.g.
the physical space your body occupies corresponds to
the spatial extension of your reading of this article.
Qualities are dimensions or aspects according to
which agents perceive, classify and compare Objects
and Events. Individual Objects and Events possess
their own individual Qualities. Such individual Quali-
ties represent dimensions shared by classes of entities.
One should note (Fig. 2) that Object Qualities are dis-
tinct from Event Qualities: physical Objects have a
mass, have a shape, a texture, etc., whilst Events have
a duration, may be fast or slow, may overlap in time or
on the contrary happen before or after other Events.
Finally, Individual Qualities have a temporary lo-
cation in a space specific to their Quality kind (e.g.
”being a 2 meter length”, ”being a 36 second dura-
tion”).
Entities that we have just mentioned are linked
together through relationships. We mention here
two main relationships: Objects (resp. Events) have
for parts (hasForPart) other Objects (resp. Events);
Objects temporarily participate in (participatesIn)
Events.
Let us mention an important difference (in partic-
ular for OntoTATIN-PIC) among Objects. DOLCE
makes the distinction between Physical Objects hav-
ing a physical reality and Non-physical Objects hav-
ing a cognitive or social reality (Masolo et al.,
2004). Non-physical Objects exist because agents de-
sign them and communicate on them. Among Non-
physical Objects, Mental Objects depend on an agent,
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