This thesis explores a holistic design process through which architectural elements can engage the dynamic forces of natural phenomena and integrate the spatial and temporal experience of building form with its physical environment. The framework for this exploration is a…

by Ronit Bodner., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1996., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-76).

Does knowledge of language consist of symbolic rules? How do children learn and use their linguistic knowledge? To elucidate these questions, we present a computational model that acquires phonological knowledge from a corpus of common English nouns and verbs. In…

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…

If we are provided a face database with only one example view per person, is it possible to recognize new views of them under a variety of different poses, especially views rotated in depth from the original example view? We…

Compliant control is a standard method for performing fine manipulation tasks, like grasping and assembly, but it requires estimation of the state of contact between the robot arm and the objects involved. Here we present a method to learn a…

This paper describes a new statistical, model-based approach to building a contact state observer. The observer uses measurements of the contact force and position, and prior information about the task encoded in a graph, to determine the current location of…

This thesis describes some aspects of a computer system for doing medical diagnosis in the specialized field of kidney disease. Because such a system faces the spectre of combinatorial explosion, this discussion concentrates on heuristics which control the number of…

I have invented "Internet Fish," a novel class of resource-discovery tools designed to help users extract useful information from the Internet. Internet Fish (IFish) are semi-autonomous, persistent information brokers; users deploy individual IFish to gather and refine information related to…

How can we construct a program that will understand stories that children would understand? By understand we mean the ability to answer questions about the story. We are interested here with understanding natural language in a very broad area. In…