Using Spatial Ontology in the Semantic Integration of Multimodal Object Manipulation in Virtual Reality

This paper describes a framework for multimodal object manipulation in virtual environments. The gist of the proposed framework is the semantic integration of multimodal input using spatial ontology and user context to integrate the interpretation results from the inputs into a single one. The spatial ontology, describing the spatial relationships between objects, is used together with the current user context to solve ambiguities coming from the user's commands. These commands are used to reposition the objects in the virtual environments. We discuss how the spatial ontology is defined and used to assist the user to perform object placements in the virtual environment as it will be in the real world.