The efficiency of conventional centralised control in logistics is limited due to the complexity, the dynamics, and the distribution of logistics processes. The paradigm of autonomous logistics aims at overcoming these limitations by delegating decision-making to local logistics entities such as packages or containers. Represented by software agents, these entities must cooperate with each other to succeed in their logistics objectives.

Multiagent systems ease the implementation of software systems to control complex processes. Like in software development in general, testing and evaluation play an important role also for multiagent systems. A particular challenge is the transferability of agent implementations from real-world operation to simulation. The objective is to minimise the additional effort for testing and evaluating agent behaviour, mainly arising from the need for synchronisation of simulation time.

Continuously growing image databases in many areas of everyday life require effective and efficient indexing and search strategies. Content-based image retrieval aims at annotating images automatically by their content. In this context, shape plays a particularly important role. Qualitative shape description applies cognitively motivated methods from qualitative spatial reasoning to characterise the shape of objects.