Integrating Open-Domain Sketch Understanding with Qualitative Two- Dimensional Rigid-Body Mechanics
Jon Wetzel, Kenneth D. Forbus · 2008
Sketching is a powerful modality for thinking through, and communicating about, mechanical designs. Qualitative mechanics reasoning has been applied to sketched input before but not without succumbing to limitations of domain-based recognition or requiring complex annotation and additional explicit knowledge from the user. This paper presents solutions to three problems in integrating qualitative mechanics reasoning with a sketch understanding platform: identifying objects and forces, discovering regions of interaction between them, and understanding the effects of these interactions. We show how the spatial knowledge available in a conceptually labeled sketch is sufficient to solve the first two problems and enables the use of qualitative mechanics to solve the third. Examples from an implemented system are used for illustration. This system is the first step in a plan to create a sketch understanding system capable of providing corrective feedback for sketched engineering designs.