The goal of this thesis is to apply the computational approach to motor learning, i.e., describe the constraints that enable performance improvement with experience and also the constraints that must be satisfied by a motor learning system, describe what is…

Control of machines that exhibit flexibility becomes important when designers attempt to push the state of the art with faster, lighter machines. Three steps are necessary for the control of a flexible planet. First, a good model of the plant…

The goal of the work reported here is to capture the commonsense knowledge of non-expert human contributors. Achieving this goal will enable more intelligent human-computer interfaces and pave the way for computers to reason about our world. In the domain…

TYPICAL is a package for describing and making automatic inferences about a broad class of SCHEME predicate functions. These functions, called types following popular usage, delineate classes of primitive SCHEME objects, composite data structures, and abstract descriptions. TYPICAL types are…

Explanation-based Generalization requires that the learner obtain an explanation of why a precedent exemplifies a concept. It is, therefore, useless if the system fails to find this explanation. However, it is not necessary to give up and resort to purely…

This paper describes ARLO, a representation language loosely modelled after Greiner and Lenant's RLL-1. ARLO is a structure-based representation language for describing structure-based representation languages, including itself. A given representation language is specified in ARLO by a collection of structures…

Reasoning about motion is an important part of our commonsense knowledge, involving fluent spatial reasoning. This work studies the qualitative and geometric knowledge required to reason in a world that consists of balls moving through space constrained by collisions with…

Sketches are commonly used in the early stages of design. Our previous system allows users to sketch mechanical systems that the computer interprets. However, some parts of the mechanical system might be too hard or too complicated to express in…

A system for visual recognition is described, with implications for the general problem of representation of knowledge to assist control. The immediate objective is a computer system that will recognize objects in a visual scene, specifically hammers. The computer receives…

This report develops a conceptual framework in which to talk about mathematical knowledge. There are several broad categories of mathematical knowledge: results which contain the traditional logical aspects of mathematics; examples which contain illustrative material; and concepts which include formal…