Bringing the computer into early stages of mechanical design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-104).by Christine J. Alvarado.S.M

Reconnaissance en ligne de croquis de schémas électriques

Cette recherche s'inscrit dans le cadre des nouvelles approches pour le développement de systèmes d'édition graphique. Notre objectif est de permettre à un utilisateur de réaliser des dessins d'ingénierie précis à l'aide d'un outil interactif qui permette la saisie d'informations sous la forme de croquis faits à la main. Ceci implique une approche qui s'appuie majoritairement sur les techniques en reconnaissance de graphiques, mais qui tient aussi compte des recherches récentes dans le domaine des interfaces basées sur le crayon numérique. Nous décrirons dans ce travail la nature du défi posé par la reconnaissance en ligne de croquis de dessins d'ingénierie et, à la lumière des ouvrages réalisés dans des domaines de recherche connexes, nous montrerons comment une technique de reconnaissance hiérarchique basée sur une description structurelle et sur les relations topologiques des formes à reconnaître apporte une solution à notre problématique. Dans le cadre de cette recherche, nous avons développé un système afin de mettre en oeuvre notre méthode de reconnaissance, lequel fut validé auprès d'un groupe d'usagers témoin. Dans ce travail, nous présentons les résultats obtenus lors de ces tests ainsi qu'une discussion sur le sujet. Enfin, nous montrerons comment ce système est à notre avis un bon premier pas dans la direction des outils d'édition graphique intelligents et nous présenterons quelques-unes des avenues de recherche à envisager pour l'approfondissement de la technique. Mots clés: reconnaissance de graphiques et de croquis, ordinateurs à stylo, crayon numérique, formes à tracés multiples, édition interactive, informations contextuelles, reconnaissance en ligne, embellissement, reconnaissance de symboles et de gestes, reconnaissance de schémas et de diagrammes, reconnaissance incrémentale

Rethinking Pen Input Interaction: Enabling Freehand Sketching Through Improved Primitive Recognition

Online sketch recognition uses machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to interpret markings made by users via an electronic stylus or pen. The goal of sketch recognition is to understand the intention and meaning of a particular user's drawing. Diagramming applications have been the primary beneficiaries of sketch recognition technology, as it is commonplace for the users of these tools to rst create a rough sketch of a diagram on paper before translating it into a machine understandable model, using computer-aided design tools, which can then be used to perform simulations or other meaningful tasks. Traditional methods for performing sketch recognition can be broken down into three distinct categories: appearance-based, gesture-based, and geometric-based. Although each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, geometric-based methods have proven to be the most generalizable for multi-domain recognition. Tools, such as the LADDER symbol description language, have shown to be capable of recognizing sketches from over 30 different domains using generalizable, geometric techniques. The LADDER system is limited, however, in the fact that it uses a low-level recognizer that supports only a few primitive shapes, the building blocks for describing higher-level symbols. Systems which support a larger number of primitive shapes have been shown to have questionable accuracies as the number of primitives increase, or they place constraints on how users must input shapes (e.g. circles can only be drawn in a clockwise motion; rectangles must be drawn starting at the top-left corner). This dissertation allows for a significant growth in the possibility of free-sketch recognition systems, those which place little to no drawing constraints on users. In this dissertation, we describe multiple techniques to recognize upwards of 18 primitive shapes while maintaining high accuracy. We also provide methods for producing confidence values and generating multiple interpretations, and explore the difficulties of recognizing multi-stroke primitives. In addition, we show the need for a standardized data repository for sketch recognition algorithm testing and propose SOUSA (sketch-based online user study application), our online system for performing and sharing user study sketch data. Finally, we will show how the principles we have learned through our work extend to other domains, including activity recognition using trained hand posture cues

Perceptual Organization in an Interactive Sketch Editing Application

This paper shows how techniques from computational vision can be deployed to support interactive sketch editing. While conventional computersupported drawing tools give users access to visible marks or image objects at a single level of abstraction, a human user's visual system rapidly constructs complex groupings and associations among image elements according to his or her immediate purposes. We have been exploring perceptually supported sketch editors in which computer vision algorithms run continuously, behind the scenes, to afford users efficient access to emergent visual objects in a drawing. We employ a flexible image interpretation architecture based on token grouping in a multiscale blackboard data structure. This organization supports multiple perceptual interpretations of line drawing data, domain-specific knowledge bases for interpreting visual structures, and natural gesture-based selection of visual objects. 1 Introduction Historically, most applications for computer vi..

Collaborative planning with digital design synthesis

GIS is now a well-established and mature technology and recently a lot of progress has been made on advanced 2D and 3D visualization technologies that work well with GIS data. Practitioners use GIS technologies to analyze problems and visualizations to share and create design ideas. However both these techniques face challenges when applied to large geographies or on regional planning problems. This is due to the uncertainty of impacts given the long time scales, multiple factors affecting the site and competitive interests and actors involved. Additionally, the process of creation of design is largely disjointed from that of analysis and visualization. Currently there is no way to systematically join design creation and analysis procedures into a seamless experience that enables collaboration. This thesis describes an effective bridge between GIS analysis and the creativity of design into a seamless process. Systematic design processes are applied through the perspective of the geodesign workflow with the central research question: “What type of digital change management support is needed to enable the design synthesis process?” Using simple digital sketching and a rational design analysis process a digital workflow that enables collaboration is described. Five workshop experiments are documented where the digital workflow was applied to build a plan at a regional level with expert and non-expert participants. Participants were able to collaborate and synthesize designs quickly and analyze the design performance. The core problem between analysis and design creation is a problem of communication and shared understanding and is solved by effective collaboration between various parties involved in the design process. Collaboration that enables a shared learning and shared understanding of the problem area that leads to a design which can then be tested and iterated on multiple times. Breaking down of a design into individual components enables decomposition of design problem into partial solutions that can be understood and compared. Communication is further facilitated by the idea of quick iteration and sharing portions of various designs. The work is novel and innovative in that it uses a multi-system approach to solving complex design and planning problems. The innovation of synthesizing individual design components digitally, the ability to use different design methods is a key contribution of this work. This research has significant implications for fundamental questions of “which way to design”, early stage planning support tools and also education in the context of regional planning issues

Perceptually-based language to simplify sketch recognition user interface development

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 473-495).Diagrammatic sketching is a natural modality of human-computer interaction that can be used for a variety of tasks, for example, conceptual design. Sketch recognition systems are currently being developed for many domains. However, they require signal-processing expertise if they are to handle the intricacies of each domain, and they are time-consuming to build. Our goal is to enable user interface designers and domain experts who may not have expertise in sketch recognition to be able to build these sketch systems. We created and implemented a new framework (FLUID - f acilitating user interface development) in which developers can specify a domain description indicating how domain shapes are to be recognized, displayed, and edited. This description is then automatically transformed into a sketch recognition user interface for that domain. LADDER, a language using a perceptual vocabulary based on Gestalt principles, was developed to describe how to recognize, display, and edit domain shapes. A translator and a customizable recognition system (GUILD - a generator of user interfaces using ladder descriptions) are combined with a domain description to automatically create a domain specific recognition system.(cont.) With this new technology, by writing a domain description, developers are able to create a new sketch interface for a domain, greatly reducing the time and expertise for the task Continuing in pursuit of our goal to facilitate UI development, we noted that 1) human generated descriptions contained syntactic and conceptual errors, and that 2) it is more natural for a user to specify a shape by drawing it than by editing text. However, computer generated descriptions from a single drawn example are also flawed, as one cannot express all allowable variations in a single example. In response, we created a modification of the traditional model of active learning in which the system selectively generates its own near-miss examples and uses the human teacher as a source of labels. System generated near-misses offer a number of advantages. Human generated examples are tedious to create and may not expose problems in the current concept. It seems most effective for the near-miss examples to be generated by whichever learning participant (teacher or student) knows better where the deficiencies lie; this will allow the concepts to be more quickly and effectively refined.(cont.) When working in a closed domain such as this one, the computer learner knows exactly which conceptual uncertainties remain, and which hypotheses need to be tested and confirmed. The system uses these labeled examples to automatically build a LADDER shape description, using a modification of the version spaces algorithm that handles interrelated constraints, and which also has the ability to learn negative and disjunctive constraints.by Tracy Anne Hammond.Ph.D