Reasoning About the Functionality of Tools and Physical Artifacts

Tool use is an important characteristic of intelligent human behavior. Representing, classifying and recognizing tools by their functionality can provide us new opportunities for understanding and eventually improving an agent's interaction with the physical world. Tech- niques have been developed in a wide range of areas within artificial intelligence to represent and automatically reason about the functionality of tools. This article surveys past approaches to reasoning about functionality in the literature and gives an extended example to illustrate the application of the techniques.

[1]  Sharon A. Stansfield,et al.  Haptic Perception with an Articulated, Sensate Robot Hand , 1992, Robotica.

[2]  Wen-Jing Li,et al.  Object recognition and articulated object learning by accumulative Hopfield matching , 2002, Pattern Recognit..

[3]  Allen Newell,et al.  A Model for Functional Reasoning in Design , 1971, IJCAI.

[4]  Ernest Davis.  The kinematics of cutting solid objects , 2005, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence.

[5]  Patrick J. Hayes,et al.  The Naive Physics Manifesto , 1990, The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

[6]  Behrouz Homayoun Far.  Functional Reasoning, Explanation and Analysis: Qualitative Function Formation Technique , 1992 .

[7]  John F. Sowa,et al.  Knowledge representation: logical, philosophical, and computational foundations , 2000 .

[8]  Peter Szolovits,et al.  What Is a Knowledge Representation? , 1993, AI Mag..

[9]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  Interactive Recognition and Representation of Functionality , 1995, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[10]  E. Reed.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1989 .

[11]  Randall H. Wilson,et al.  Geometric Reasoning about Assembly Tools , 1998, Artif. Intell..

[12]  Michael Brady,et al.  Generating and Generalizing Models of Visual Objects , 1987, Artif. Intell..

[13]  D. Stork.  Generic object recognition using form & function , 1996 .

[14]  David Carr.  : The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines , 1995 .

[15]  Fausto Giunchiglia,et al.  FUR: Understanding functional reasoning , 1989, Int. J. Intell. Syst..

[16]  George Lakoff,et al.  Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things , 1987 .

[17]  V. Lifschitz.  Cracking an Egg: An Exercise in Commonsense Reasoning , 1998 .

[18]  Ernest Davis,et al.  Commonsense Reasoning about Loosely Constrained Systems of Rigid Solid Objects , 2000 .

[19]  Ehud Rivlin,et al.  Function From Motion , 1996, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[20]  Azriel Rosenfeld,et al.  Recognition by Functional Parts , 1995, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[21]  Marie-Christine Jaulent,et al.  Object structure and action requirements: A compatibility model for functional recognition , 1991, Int. J. Intell. Syst..

[22]  Thomas F. Stahovich,et al.  An Ontology of Mechanical Devices , 1998 .

[23]  Patrick Henry Winston,et al.  Learning structural descriptions from examples , 1970 .

[24]  Ernest Davis,et al.  Naive Physics Perplex , 1997, AI Mag..

[25]  Kevin W. Bowyer,et al.  Generic recognition of articulated objects by reasoning about functionality , 1994, ICPR.

[26]  Peter K. Allen,et al.  Mapping haptic exploratory procedures to multiple shape representations , 1990, Proceedings., IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[27]  Lucia M. Vaina,et al.  Three-dimensional object representation based on the largest convex patches method , 1992, Other Conferences.

[28]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[29]  Matthew Brand,et al.  Physics-Based Visual Understanding , 1997, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[30]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  An Active Approach to Characterization and Recognition of Functionality and Functional Properties , 1993 .

[31]  Tomás Lozano-Pérez,et al.  Spatial Planning: A Configuration Space Approach , 1983, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[32]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  Commonsense-based interfaces , 2000, CACM.

[33]  Robert St. Amant.  A preliminary discussion of tools and tool use , 2002 .

[34]  Ramakant Nevatia,et al.  Recognition and localization of generic objects for indoor navigation using functionality , 1998, Image Vis. Comput..

[35]  Rodney A. Brooks,et al.  Symbolic Reasoning Among 3-D Models and 2-D Images , 1981, Artif. Intell..

[36]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  Shape and Function , 1987, Other Conferences.

[37]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  Functionality investigation using a discrete event system approach , 1994, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[38]  Thomas G. Evans.  A heuristic program to solve geometric-analogy problems , 1987 .

[39]  Patrick Henry Winston,et al.  Learning physical descriptions from functional definitions , 1983, AAAI 1983.

[40]  Leora Morgenstern,et al.  Mid-Sized Axiomatizations of Commonsense Problems: A Case Study in Egg Cracking , 2001, Stud Logica.

[41]  Michael Brady,et al.  The Mechanic's Mate , 1984, ECAI.

[42]  M. Minsky.  The Society of Mind , 1986 .

[43]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  Society of Mind: A Response to Four Reviews , 1991, Artif. Intell..

[44]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  Logical Versus Analogical or Symbolic Versus Connectionist or Neat Versus Scruffy , 1991, AI Mag..

[45]  Jack Hodges,et al.  Naive mechanics: a computational model of device use and function in design improvisation , 1992, IEEE Expert.

[46]  David G. Stork,et al.  Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality , 1996 .

[47]  David G. Stork,et al.  Generic object recognition using form and function , 1998, Pattern Analysis and Applications.

[48]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  Deep issues: commonsense-based interfaces. , 2000 .

[49]  Dmitry B. Goldgof,et al.  Recognizing object function through reasoning about partial shape descriptions and dynamic physical properties , 1996, Proc. IEEE.

[50]  Randall H. Wilson,et al.  A framework for geometric reasoning about tools in assembly , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[51]  Alex Pentland,et al.  The ThingWorld modeling system: virtual sculpting by modal forces , 1990, I3D '90.

[52]  Ruzena Bajcsy,et al.  Identification of functional features through observations and interactions , 1995 .

[53]  Ernest Davis,et al.  Representations of commonsense knowledge , 2014, notThenot Morgan Kaufmann series in representation and reasoning.

[54]  E. Menzel.  Animal Tool Behavior: The Use and Manufacture of Tools by Animals, Benjamin B. Beck. Garland STPM Press, New York and London (1980), 306, Price £24.50 , 1981 .

[55]  Thomas E. Horton,et al.  A tool-based interactive drawing environment , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[56]  John McCarthy,et al.  Epistemological Problems of Artificial Intelligence , 1987, IJCAI.

[57]  Jack Hodges.  Functional and Physical Object Characteristics and Object Recognition in Improvisation , 1995, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[58]  Lucia M. Vaina,et al.  From object structure to object function , 1991, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[59]  Lawrence Birnbaum,et al.  Causal Scene Understanding , 1995, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..