The qualitative spatial reasoning methods described in this thesis can be evaluated from two different points of view. The first is the field of qualitative physics, where the significance of these methods lie in the fact that they can do things other qualitative reasoning systems cannot do. The second is the field of robotics, where the significance of the methods is that they provide new techniques for the type of reasoning that robots usually do.
From either point of view, it is necessary to define some criteria by which the usefulness of a new representation or reasoning method can be evaluated. This concluding chapter is divided into two main sections, each of which discusses the qualitative spatial reasoning methods in terms of a different set of evaluation criteria; the first section considers qualitative reasoning systems, and the second, robot reasoning systems.