How can we insure that knowledge embedded in a program is applied effectively? Traditionally the answer to this question has been sought in different problem solving paradigms and in different approaches to encoding and indexing knowledge. Each of these is…

This report shows how knowledge about the visual world can be built into a shape representation in the form of a descriptive vocabulary making explicit the important geometrical relationships comprising objects' shapes. Two computational tools are offered: (1) Shapestokens are…

This paper examines the issues and the solutions that have been studied in database (DB) integration research and tries to draw lessons from them for knowledge base (KB) integration.

In a Communication Bootstrapping system, peer components with different perceptual worlds invent symbols and syntax based on correlations between their percepts. I propose that Communication Bootstrapping can also be used to acquire functional definitions of words and causal reasoning knowledge.…

This paper describes a natural language system START. The system analyzes English text and automatically transforms it into an appropriate representation, the knowledge base, which incorporates the information found in the text. The user gains access to information stored in…

This thesis presents a new approach to building a design for testability (DFT) system. The system takes a digital circuit description, finds out the problems in testing it, and suggests circuit modifications to correct those problems. The key contributions of…

This is a partial theory of thinking, combining a number of classical and modern concepts from psychology, linguistics, and AI. Whenever one encounters a new situation (or makes a substantial change in one's viewpoint) he selects from memory a structure…

by Lori Faith Lamel., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1988., Bibliography: leaves 140-150.

by Robert J. Grochowski., Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil Engineering, 1988., Includes bibliographical references.

In developing telephone-based conversational systems, we foresee future systems capable of supporting multiple domains and flexible vocabulary. Users can pursue several topics of interest within a single telephone call, and the system is able to switch transparently among domains within…