Abstract: Objective Using spatial cognitive principles drawn from the Gestalt psychology,an improved cone-based model is proposed for computing and describing spatial direction relations.The basic idea of themodel is:first,calculate the MBR(minimum bounding rectangle)of the reference object;then,takethe midpoints of the four edges of the MBR as the starting points to construct four cone direction re-gions(N,S,W,E);finally,use the edges of the four cone direction regions,the edges of the MBRand their extension lines to re-divide spatial directions.Experiments show that the improved cone-based model can effectively overcome the defects in the existing cone-based models.