[mod.techreports] st15.x tech reports

E1AR0002@SMUVM1.BITNET (11/17/86)

TECHNICAL NOTE: 355\hfill PRICE: \$15.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE: SPECIAL RELATIONS IN AUTOMATED DEDUCTION\\
AUTHORS:  ZOHAR MANNA and RICHARD WALDINGER\\
DATE:  JUNE 1985\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT:  Two deduction rules are introduced to give streamlined
treatment to relations of special importance in an automated
theorem-proving system.  These rules, the \underline{relation
replacement} and \underline{relation matching} rules, generalize to an
arbitrary binary relation the paramodulation and E-resolution rules,
respectively, for equality, and may operate within a noclausal or
clausal system.  The new rules depend on an extension of the notion of
\underline{polarity} to apply to subterms as well as to subsentences,
with respect to a given binary relation.  The rules allow us to
eliminate troublesome axioms, such as transitivity and monotonicity,
from the system; proofs are shorter and more comprehensible, and the
search space is correspondingly deflated.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 356\hfill PRICE: \$20.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= TEAM: AN EXPERIMENT IN THE DESIGN OF TRANSPORTABLE\\
         \> NATURAL-LANGUAGE INTERFACES\\
AUTHORS: \= BARBARA GROSZ, DOUGLAS E. APPELT, PAUL MARTIN\\
     \> FERNANDO PEREIRA\\
DATE: AUGUST 1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}

ABSTRACT:  This paper describes TEAM, a transportable natural-language
interface system.  TEAM was constructed to test the feasibility of
building a natural-language system that could be adapted to interface
with new databases by users who were not experts in natural-language
processing.  The paper presents an overview of the system design,
emphasizing those choices that were imposed by the demands of
transportability.  It discusses several general problems of
natural-language processing that were faced in constructing the
system, including quantifier scoping, various pragmatic issues, and
verb acquisition.  The paper also provides a comparison of TEAM with
several other transportable systems; the comparison includes
discussion of the range of natural language handled by each as well as
a description of the approach taken to transportability in each.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 357 (Revised)\hfill PRICE: \$10.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION AND THE REPRESENTATION OF\\
         \> NATURAL FORM\\
AUTHOR: ALEX P. PENTLAND\\
DATE: JULY 1986\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}

ABSTRACT:  To support our reasoning abilities perception must recover
environment regularities--e.g., rigidity, objectness,'' axes of
symmetry--for later use of cognition.  To create a theory of how our
perceptual apparatus can produce meaningful cognitive primitives from
an array of image intensities we require a representation whose
elements may be lawfully related to impotant physical regularities,
and that correctly describes the perceptual organization people impose
on the stimulus.  Unfortunately, the representations that are
currently available were originally developed for other purposes (e.g.,
physics, engineering) and have so far proven unsuitable for the
problems of perception or commo-sense reasoning.  In answer to this
problem we present a representation that has proven competent to
accurately describe an extensive variety of natrual forms (e.g.,
people, mountains, clouds, trees), as well as man-made forms, in a
succinct and natural manner.  The approach taken in this
representational system is to describe scene structure at a scale that
is similar to our naive perceptual notion of a part,'' by use of
descriptions that reflect a possible formative history of the object,
e.g., how the object might have been constructed from lumps of clay.
For this representation to be useful it must be possible to recover
such descriptions from image data; we show that the primitive elements
of such descriptions may be recovered in an overconstrained and
therefore reliable manner.  We believe that this descriptive system
makes an important contribution towards solving current problems in
perceiving and reasoning about natural forms by allowing us to
construct accurate descriptions that are extremely compact and that
capture people's intuitive notions about the part structure of
three-dimensional forms.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 358\hfill PRICE: \$15.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  PRELIMINARY REPORT ON A THEORY OF PLAN SYNTHESIS\\
AUTHOR:  EDWIN P.D. PEDNAULT\\
DATE:  AUGUST1985\\[0.01in]
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 359\hfill PRICE: \$10.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= A WEAK LOGIC OF KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF:  EPISTEMIC\\
         \> AND DOXASTIC LOGIC FOR THE YUPPIE GENERATION\\
AUTHOR:  DAVID ISRAEL\\
DATE:  1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 360\hfill PRICE: \$15.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= BEHAVIORAL SPECIFICATION AND PLANNING FOR\\
         \> MULTIAGENT DOMAINS\\
AUTHOR:  AMY L. LANSKY\\
DATE:  NOVEMBER 1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}

ABSTRACT: This report discusses a new approach to the specification of
properties of multiagent enviroments and  the generation  of plans for
such domains.   The   ideas presented  elaborate   previous work on  a
formal, behavioral model of  concurrent  action, called GEM (the Group
Element Model).   By combining  the  GEM specification  formalism with
artificial intelligence  techniques for  planning, we have   devised a
framework that seems promising in several respects.  First, instead of
ad hoc  planning techniques, we are  utilizing a   formal  concurrency
model  as  a basis for planning.  Secondly,  the  model encourages the
description of domain properties in terms of behavioral constraints,
rather than  using  more   traditional   state  predicate  approaches.
Behavioral descriptions,   which emphasize  the causal,  temporal, and
simultaneity  relationships among actions, are  particularly suited to
describing the complex properties of multiagent  domains.  Finally, we
present an initial proposal for a planner based on behavioral forms of
representation.  Given  a  set of constraints describing  a  problem
domain, the proposed  planner   generates plans through   a process of
incremental constraint satisfaction.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  361\hfill PRICE:  \$15.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= MORE NOTES FROM THE UNIFICATION UNDERGROUND:  A SECOND\\
            \> COMPILATION OF PAPERS ON UNIFICATION-BASED GRAMMAR\\
         \> FORMALISMS\\
AUTHORS: \= STUART M. SHIEBER, LAURI KARTTUNEN, FERNANDO PEREIRA and\\
     \> MARTIN KAY\\
DATE:  AUGUST 1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  362\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  FORMAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE IN AI AND ROBOTICS\\
AUTHOR:  STANLEY J. ROSENSCHEIN\\
DATE:  SEPTEMBER 1985\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT:  Although the concept  of knowledge plays a  central role in
artificial  intelligence, the   theoretical foundations of   knowledge
representation currently rest on a very limited conception  of what it
means for a machine to know a proposition.  In the  current view,  the
machine is regarded as knowing a  fact  if its state either explicitly
encodes the fact as a sentence of an interpreted formal language or if
such a sentence can be derived  from other encoded sentences according
to  the rules  of an appropriate  logical system.   We  contract  this
conception, the interpreted-symbolic-structure approach, with another,
the situated-automata approach,  whih seeks  to analyze  knowledge  in
terms of relations between the state of a machine and the state of its
environment over   time using logic  as a  metalanguage  in  which the
analysis is carried out.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:    363\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  EXPERIMENTAL ROBOT PSYCHOLOGY\\
AUTHOR:  KURT G. KONOLIGE\\
DATE:  NOVEMBER 1985\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT:  In  this paper I argue  that  an intentional methodology is
appropriate  in  the design of  robot  agents in  cooperative planning
domains--at least in those domains that are sufficiently open-ended to
require extensive  reasoning  about the  environment  (including other
agents).  That is, we should take seriously the notion that an agent's
cognitive state expresses beliefs about the world, desires or goals to
change the world, and intentions  or plans that  are likely to achieve
these goals.  In cooperative situations, reasoning about  these cognitive
structures is  important for  communication  and problem-solving.
How can  we construct such models of  agent cognition?  Here I propose
an approach that I  call it  experimental  robot psychology because it
involves formalizing and reasoning about the  design of existing robot
agents.  It shows promise of yielding an efficient  and  general means
of reasoning about cognitive states.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  364\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  CONSTRAINTS ON ORDER\\
AUTHOR:  HANS USZKOREIT\\
DATE:  OCTOBER 1985\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT:  Partially free  word  order  as   it occurs  in German  and
probably to  some extent in  all natural languages  arises through the
interaction  of potentially   conflicting ordering   principles.     A
modified  linear precedence  (LP)  component  of   Generalized  Phrase
Structure Grammar (GPSG) is proposed that accommodates  partially free
word  order.  In  the  revised framework,  LP  rules  are  sets  of LP
clauses.  In a  case in which  these clauses make conflicting ordering
predictions, more than one order is grammatical.  LP clauses may refer
to   different  types  of  categorial  information  such  as  category
features, morphological  case,   thematic roles, discourse  roles, and
phonological  information.   The  modified   framework is  applied  to
examples from  German.   It is demonstrated how  the new  LP component
constrains the linear ordering of major nominal categories.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  365\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  EVALUATION OF STEREOSYS VS. OTHER STEREO SYSTEMS\\
AUTHOR:  MARSHA JO HANNAH\\
DATE:  OCTOBER 1985\\[0.01in]
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  366\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  THE STEREO CHALLENGE DATA BASE\\
AUTHOR:  MARSHA JO HANNAH\\
DATE:  OCTOBER 1985\\[0.01in]
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  367\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= ONE-EYED STEREO:  A UNIFIED STRATEGY TO RECOVER SHAPE \\
         \> FROM A SINGLE IMAGE\\
AUTHOR:  THOMAS M. STRAT\\
DATE:  NOVEMBER 1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}

     ABSTRACT: A single two-dimensional image  is   an  ambiguous
representation of  the three-dimensional world--many  different scenes
could have poduced the  same image--yet the  human  visual  system  is
extremely successful at recovering a qualitatively  correct dept model
from   this   type of  representation.  Workers    in    the field  of
computational  vision  have devised a  number of distinct schemes that
attempt to     emulate this human  capability;    these   schemes  are
collectively known as   shape  from....'' methods  (e.g., shape from
shading, shape from texture, or shape from contour).  In this paper we
contend that the distinct assumptions  made in each  of  these schemes
must be tantamount to   providing a  second (virtual)  image    of the
original scene, and that any one of these approaches can be translated
into a conventional stereo formalism.  In paticular,  we  show that it
is frequently  possible to structure the  problem as one of recovering
depth from a stereo pair consisting of the  supplied perspective image
(the original image)   and  an hypothesized  orthograhic  image   (the
virtual image).  We present a new algorithm of  the  form required  to
accomplish this type of stereo reconstruction task.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  368\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  REFERENCE AND DENOTATION:  THE DESCRIPTIVE MODEL\\
AUTHOR:  AMICHAI KRONFELD\\
DATE:  OCTOBER 1985\\[0.01in]
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TECHNICAL NOTE: 369\hfill PRICE:  \$15.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  THE STRUCTURES OF DISCOURSE STRUCTURE\\
AUTHOR:  BARBARA J. GROSZ\\
DATE:  NOVEMBER 1985\\[0.01in]
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  371\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[-0.15in]
\begin{tabbing}
\noindent TITLE: \= LINEAR PRECEDENCE IN DISCONTINUOUS CONSTITUENTS:  COMPLEX\\
          \> FRONTING IN GERMAN\\
AUTHOR:  HANS USZKOREIT\\
DATE :  OCTOBER 1985\\[-0.15in]
\end{tabbing}

ABSTRACT: Syntactic processes that have been identified as  sources of
discontinuous constituents  exhibit radically    different properties.
They seem to   fall  into  several  classes:   leftward  extraction,''
right-ward  movements,'' scrambling'' phenomena,  and  parenthetical
insertions.  Current linguistic theories differ as to the formal tools
they employ both for   describing the paticipaing  syntactic phenomena
and for encoding the resulting representations.

In this paper, the general problem of  determining the linear order in
the discontinuous parts of a constituent is discussed.  The focus lies
on  frameworks that  use their feature mechanisms  for connecting  the
noncontiguous elements.  It is  then shown that  the current framework
of Generalized Phrase Structure   Grammar  (GPSG)  is not  suited  for
describing the  interaction of leftward  extractions,  scrambling, and
constraints  on linear  order.  The  relevant  data come  from  German
fronting.  Previous analyses (Johnson 1983;  Nerbonne  1984; Uszkoreit
1982; 1984)  have   neglected certain types of fronting   or failed to
integrate their account  of  fronting properly  with   an analysis  of
linear precedence.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  372\hfill PRICE:  \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  A GENERAL SELECTION CRITERION FOR INDUCTIVE INFERENCE\\
AUTHORS:  MICHAEL P. GEORGEFF and CHRISTOPHER S. WALLACE\\
DATE:  DECEMBER 1985\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT: This paper presents a   general criterion for measuring  the
degree to which any given theory can be  considered a good explanation
of a particular body of data.  A formal definition of what constitutes
an acceptable explanation of a body of data  is given,  and the length
of explanation used as  a measure for selecting  the best of a set  of
competing  theories.    Unlike most previous  approaches to  inductive
inference, the length  of explanation includes a measure  of the  com-
plexity or likelihood of a  theory as well as a  measure of the degree
of fit between theory and data.  In this way, prior expectations about
the environment can be represented, thus providing a hypothesis  space
in which  search for  good or optimal theories  is made more tractable.
Furthermore, it is shown how theories can be represented as structures
tha reflect the conceptual entities used to describe and  reason about
the given problem domain.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  373\hfill PRICE: \$10.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  A STOCHASTIC APPROACH TO STEREO VISION\\
AUTHOR:  STEPHEN T. BARNARD\\
DATE:  APRIL 1986\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT: A  stochastic optimization  approach  to stereo matching  is
presented.   Unlike conventional   correlation matching   and  feature
matching, the  approach   provides a  dense array   of  disparities,
eliminating the  need for interpolation.   First, the  stereo  matching
problem is defined in terms of finding a disparity  map that satisfies
two competing  constraints: (1) matched points  should  have similar
image intensity, and (2) the disparity  map  should be smooth.   These
constraints  are  expressed in  an  energy'' function that can   be
evaluated locally.  A simulated annealing algorithm is used to  find a
disparity  map  that has  very low  energy  (i.e., in  which both con-
straints have simultaneously been approximately satisfied).  Annealing
allows the large-scale  structure of  the disparity map   to emerge at
higher temperaures, and avoids the problem of  converging too  quickly
on a local  minimum.    Results are  shown  for   a  spase  random-dot
stereogram, a  vertical  aerial stereogram (shown   in comparison   to
ground truth),  and an   oblique  ground-level  scene  with  occlusion
boundaries.\\
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