Ontology

Ontology is the study of what there is. Or perhaps a better way of thinking of it is the study of classification systems.  It’s not a matter of names, but rather of the navigable relations between names.  Trees, plants, engineered materials, industries etc.. all need to be organized in some fashion.  By far the most common is what’s called ‘IS A’ relations or subtype/supertype.  So a maple tree is a tree is a plant is a object.  All maple trees have leaves of a certain shape; all trees have leaves; all plants ingest CO2; all objects have a spatial volume.

Upper ontologies attempt to specify those dimensions and attributes such as time and space that exist for all objects. This is critical for computers to be able to link information from different domains.  Ontologies are increasingly being used to support the fusion of information across media (e.g., sensors, video feeds, databases and text). Three of the most commonly used upper ontologies are

DOLCE
SUMO
BFO

BFO is the defacto standard within the US government and we have aligned our efforts with Professor Barry Smith and BFO.  In order to make full use of ontological representations, we have been developing a combinatory ontological grammar. As software, it can generate any conceivable ontological expression.  And use such composed expressions to portray the meaning of any sensor input or intended motor output.

For more information please contact ethomsenATetworks.org

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