Analysis of Shapes Using Shape Grammars: A Program that Uses a Shape Grammar to Solve a Three-Dimensional Perceptual Task

Shape grammars can be used in the analysis, as well as the generation, of shapes. Shape grammars provide a means for the explicit specification of the structure underlying shapes; it follows that shapes can be analyzed in terms of this structure. An important feature of the use of shape grammars as an analytic tool is that it allows for the analysis of complicated shapes that may never have been seen before, just as phrase structure grammmars can be used in the analysis of complicated and previously unknown strings of symbols (e.g. Algol programs).