Shape
Understanding System is based on utilization of the conceptual structure of
visual objects. The basic “thinking” materials of the SUS are categories of
visual objects. The terms concept and category are defined based on the
similar criteria, however the term category is used to denote the well
defined object which is used in the context of other previously defined
categories members of categorical structure of the existent knowledge. The
visual object is part of the real world or is one of the objects of the
cultural world. The objects of the cultural world dose not need to have its
representative in the real world. For example, the mythical Cyclopes
although have its visual equivalent in the form of the artistic sculpture
it is not represented by any object of the real world. System of the
categories of the visual objects was presented in our book „Shape
Understanding System – the first step towards building thinking machine”.
In contrast to existing systems based on the different forms of knowledge
representation which are based on small part of the specialistic knowledge,
SUS is designed based on the
principle of understanding in the context of the categorical structure of
knowledge. SUS natural
environment consists of objects of the real world and because of this the
primary matter of SUS
“thinking” is rooted in the categories of visual objects. It does not mean
that SUS will not be able to
understand very complex problems (e.g. philosophy) or create a new
knowledge based on discovered regularities. However, what is very important
especially in the context of establishing of the demarcation line between SUS and members of our human family, is fact
that SUS existing in the world
of things will be forced to think in terms of the objects of the
materialistic world. SUS being
made and not created becomes the ideal representative of the fundamental
materialism (Jacobin-ek). The results of research
connected with problems of understanding and thinking will have an enormous
influence on liberating philosophy and theology from “corrosion” of
primitive materialism caused by enlightenment as well as vulgar Marxism. It
is grate achievement of our method to show that we human beings are unique
in the universe. Instead of the enormous efforts of some “scientists” and
gigantic amount of money spent on the biologically oriented research there
is no way (by applying this type of research) to prove that even the
brightest ape can solve some of the educational tests. The difference in
solving these problems between human being and other species shows that it
is not possible to “become” human being by evolution from any existing
species. It is one of the reason why masonic or
left oriented modern inquisition try to destroy all research that supply
scientific facts that are against “evolutianocentric”
scientific ideology. Another reason of why some organizations (not only
political parties) are against understanding research is the fact that
results of research in understanding show how big role, knowledge that is
learned, is playing in making rational decisions. It is no possible that a
member of the parliament or minister who has rudimentary educational
experience and very little knowledge could undertake rational decisions.
There is no hope that in country such as Australia, where most of
figures of the political life shows very low engagement in educational
process, the most of the political decisions will be rational. Who is
paying for this?
At
present stage of research we are focusing on teaching SUS the basic concepts that could be found in
the educational program of the modern school. Students’ abilities to
understand are evaluated based on tests supplied by Ministry of Education. SUS is thought also to solve all accessible
tasks that are part of our human intellectual exercises.
Some
international organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) tried to use its ideological prejudice to enforce
the anachronistic and antihuman model of educational system. According to
OECD “all stakeholders –parents, students, those who teach and run
education systems as well as the general public –need to be informed on how
well their education systems prepare students for life. Knowledge and
skills in school subjects such as languages, mathematics and science are an
essential foundation for this but a much wider range of competencies is
needed for students to be well prepared for the future”. The proposed model
of OECD that is now introduced in many countries under the term PISA projects is well
suited for teaching and learning machine (robot) and supply the good
material for testing SUS
abilities to be well prepared for the future.
SUS is solving problems by referring to the
knowledge that was previously learned (by SUS).
It is important to underline that process of teaching/learning of SUS is a continuous process that means SUS can acquire knowledge in nearly “unlimited
way”. The most difficult problem in learning of the new knowledge is the
utilization of the acquired knowledge on the level of complex relations
among different categories at the different categorical levels and the
different knowledge domains. It should be noticed that in contrast to
limitations of our human abilities to memorize knowledge (part of knowledge
is forgotten), SUS
is able to store the knowledge without loosing its parts.
In
order to show SUS abilities
some problems will be given as examples of tasks that SUS learn to understand and solve. One of the
most popular general abilities for problem solving is the ability to solve
the cross-word puzzle. The cross-word puzzle consists of the different queries
(questions) that often belong to the area of so called common sense
knowledge. Queries that refer to the category of visual objects are
concerned with knowledge of the categories of the visual object. These
queries are given by the following pattern “general term for ...”, “type of
object”, “part of object”, “object has”, “object consists of “. For
example, the question ‘general term for beef, lamb, venison’ refers to the
general category “meat” from which the specific categories such as ->[beef, lamb, venison, …] are derived. The question
given by this pattern can be answered by searching of the categorical chain
 (meet->[beef, lamb, venison, …]). The result of the
searching is the category of the higher level, in our case “meat”. The
query given by pattern “type of meat” is answered by searching this same
categorical chain in the opposite direction. Queries that refer to the
knowledge category of the visual object can consist of the following
patterns: “object made of”, “object used for”, “object used to”, “object
used with”, “object used by”, “object used in”. Knowledge of the knowledge
categories of the visual object is given in the form of definitions that is
part of the knowledge schema of these categories. The questions (query)
refer to the definitions and it indicates search operation that need to be
performed in order to find the answer. For example,
Q:
which hammer is made of wood D1: mallet is hammer D2: mallet is made of
wood
Q:
name of object with flat head D1: nail part head, peak, shank D2: nail
object with head D3: nail object with flat head D4: nail object with sharp
end
Q:
find object used for woodworking D: hammer used for [woodwork, carpentry,
finishing work, moulding, interior panelling, cabinetwork]
Q:
Which object is used to affix thin materials D: nail is used to affix thin
materials
Q:
which hammer is used by carpenter D: carpenter hammer is used by carpenter
Most
of questions can be classified into one of the knowledge categories such as
geography and solved by applying the knowledge of the geographical
knowledge category. The tasks are performed in two stages: understanding
task and finding the solution. The questions can be given in the form of
domain independent patterns. For example, query “river in Poland” is transformed into
pattern “object in container”  , where o denotes object such as river and  is a container
such as continent or country. In the specific domain such as geography
container can have a meaning of the geographical categories.
At the
first stage of problem solving that is understanding
of the query, the query is transformed into the basic representation. For
example, the basic representation for questions “river in Poland”,
“mountain in Hungary”, “lake in Armenia”, “island in France” is the form where o is a
category of geographical objects  and geographical
categories of knowledge are represented as follows       are categories of
geographical units where  ,  ,  .
In
order to solve this problem there is a need to learn of specific knowledge.
Knowledge needs to be learned based on knowledge pattern By selecting
object such as a river there is a need to learn knowledge at each
categorical level represented by container  By selecting
categorical level  (continent) all
rivers on each continent are learned  , where M is a number of continents. Next, by selecting a
categorical level  (country)  , (H is a number of countries), all rivers on each
continent are learned. Finding the solution is searching for object or
objects in the container. The query “river in Poland” is translated into a
searching procedure  and the solution
is a set  or one element  of this set.
The
similar question such as “country in Europe”, “province in Belgium”,
“county in Ireland”, “capitol of Belgium”, “town in Poland” is transformed
to the form  , where x is a category at the level k that is lower that
level i. Question such as “country with high
population” is transformed into the form  and  denotes the big
value of the attribute  , usually in the interval  , where  is a maximum value
of the attribute a.
TESTS
Educational
tests are in general used to test the students’ ability to learn. There is
a big variation across tests used as educational tests. One of the test
categories is test that examines general ability to solve problems. This
type of tests is used to teach SUS
solving the general problems. These kinds of tests are formulated as tasks
which can be solved without reference to the specific domain dependent
knowledge. For example, the task: “number codes
5231 1523 and 2543 represent three of four words GRIN
IRON LONG and RING number code for LINGO is 72314 73214 42714 43714” and
the task: “in certain code PRXUN means SAYS using same code what does OMHAM
mean”. In order to solve these tasks there is a need to find the method of
coding words and apply this method to find the solution.
Another
type of educational tests is test that examines understanding of the
concepts of a given domain through ability to solve problems of this
domain. For example:
“in three minutes Gabrielle can walk 300
meters in five minutes Mara can walk 600 meters they started walking at
same time along same track how far apart were they after 4 minutes"
one jug contains 1.8 litres of juice
another jug contains 2.4 litres of juice how much juice must be poured from
one jug to other so they contain same amount"
Bob has saved 24 $ if Kylie saves another 4
$ she will have as much as Bob how much does Kylie have"
if diameter of Earth is about 13000000
meters what is radius of Earth"
“rectangle is 1.5 cm wide and 6 cm long
what is ratio of width to diagonal of rectangle"
“rectangle is 1.5 cm wide and 6 cm long
what is ratio of width to perimeter of rectangle"
Solving
of this type of tasks assumes very good understanding of the concepts from
the area of solving text tasks. These tasks refer to the real world
situations and can be treated as a special kind of real world models.
Another type of tasks that refers to models of the selected aspects of the
real world are tasks from domains such as physics,
chemistry or biology. Problem in physic is transformed from linguistic form
into basic form and next, after data are extracted and formula is found,
the result is obtained during computation stage. The physics categories
such as energy, momentum, current, flux, inference, capacitance, and so
forth, have very special scientific meaning. These categories must be
learned promptly and accurately because the physic knowledge builds layer
upon layer. Unless you understand exactly what velocity is, you can not
understand what acceleration or momentum are, and without them you cannot
know what force is and on and on. The knowledge of physics consists of
definitions, relationships, laws, rules and equations. Important part of
learning physics is to obtain the ability to solve problems. Ability to
solve problems is the ultimate proof of understanding and competence in
physic. SUS is thought
physical knowledge and is tested based on educational tests. Examples of
tasks from this domains used for teaching SUS
are given as follows:
change speed 0.2 m/s to units of kilometres
per hour;
change 0.2 m/s into km/h;
train moves at average speed of 0.25 m/s
how far will it travel in 4 minutes;
robot travelled 1200 m with speed of 20.0
m/s how long did trip take;
car travel 10 km in 30 min what was his
speed
robot that travelled 1200 m had average
speed of 20.0 m/s how long did trip take;
rolling across machine shop at constant
speed of 4.25 m/s robot covers distance of 17.0 m how long did that journey
take;
runner makes one lap around 200 m track in
time of 25 s what was runner average speed;
auto travels at rate of 25 km/h for 4.0
minutes and finally at 20 km/h for 2.0 minutes find total distance covered
in km;
speed of train is reduced uniformly from 15
m/s to 7 m/s while travelling distance of 90 m how much farther will train
travel before coming to rest;
bus moving in straight line at speed of 20
m/s begins to slow at constant rate of 3 m/s each second find how far it
goes before stopping;
ball is dropped from rest at hight of 50 m
above ground how long does it take to reach ground;
stone is thrown straight upward and it
rises to hight of 20 m with what speed was it thrown;
Example
of tasks from chemistry that SUS
is thought to solve:
give the symbol for sodium,
name K,
calculate the pressure of 15 mol neon at 30
C in 12 L vessel using the van der Waals equation
find the pH of the solution resulting when 50 mL of 0.2 M HCL is mixed with 50 mL
of 0.2 M HC2H3O2?
Tasks
that are connected with mathematical computation can be given in the form
showing many aspects of the mathematical knowledge and abilities to solve
mathematical problems. One aspect is to obtain ability to compute of the
complex mathematical expressions, another one is to understand the method
of the mathematical computation of these expressions. SUS has ability to perform complex mathematical
expressions both on the numerical and symbolic level. These tasks can be
given as follows
compute 3+6/sqrt(8),
determine the values of the parameter L for which
the boundary-value problem y’’+L^2y=0
y(0)=0, y(5)=0, has
nontrivial solutions.
In the
case of understanding of the computational method of the mathematical
expression SUS needs to have
an ability to explain the way in which the result was obtained. The very
good understanding of the mathematical concepts is used in mathematical
proofs and creation of the mathematical knowledge. Solving of these
problems is initiated by acquisition of the mathematical knowledge in the
form of the theorems and definitions. Some definitions used for learning SUS (given in the SUS
convention) are presented below:
polygon
that has three sides – triangle;
quadrilateral
whose two sides are parallel and equal - parallelogram";
quadrilateral
that has opposite sides pairwise equal -
parallelogram";
quadrilateral
who's opposite sides are pairwise parallel -
parallelogram";
quadrilateral
who's diagonals bisect each other - parallelogram";
quadrilateral
who's opposite angles are equal - parallelogram";
These
definitions are used to give the description of the perceived object in the
form of mathematical categories. It is important to stress that SUS can name perceived object that only to some
extent is a perceptual approximation of the geometrical figure. The
transformation of the perceptual data into space the strictly defined
mathematical categories make it possible to understand by SUS questions such as: “What is the difference
between polygon and quadrilateral" or "What is the difference
between right triangle and obtuse triangle". In similar way the
concepts from the more advanced mathematical areas are learned.
Diagnosis
Medical
diagnosis belong to the group of problems where there is a need for a very
good understanding of the concept from the given domain and well developed
ability of reasoning aspecialy visual reasoning
based on the analogical inference. Existing expert systems that are used in
the area of medical diagnosis based on the logical rules of inference can
not cope with problems were the visual material is a part of the data used
in obtaining of the good diagnostic results. SUS
that has ability to “think visually” can, in an easy way, include the
visual data in the diagnostic process.
Text understanding and translation
Understanding
of the arbitrary text seems to be the most complex problem to be solved. SUS is designed in a way to be able, at first,
to understand concepts from a given domain such as mathematics, physics or
musical instruments. It is obvious that understanding of the mathematical
concepts depends on the subject that tries to understand them. For primary
school students, it will be understanding mathematics as a set of rules
that provide means for doing simple computations, whereas for mathematician
it will be the vast area of abstract knowledge containing theorems, proofs
and definitions. Similarly SUS
in the first stage of learning of concepts from the different domains is
able to understand the basic concepts and basic relations among the
different categories. At the next stage SUS
will be able to understand the specific categories of the selected domain
of knowledge. The ability of SUS
to understand depends on the knowledge of the given domain acquired during
learning process. The most difficult problem is learning and understanding
of the general concepts that are part of the philosophical knowledge. These
concepts are not well defined and understanding will be connected with
interpretation in context of many aspects rather than simple referring to
definition or description.
Translation
is strictly connected with understanding text. Text consists of sentences
and SUS understands sentences
by transforming them into the basic form. The basic form of the sentence
does not depend on language and expresses the meaning in the form of the
connections among categories of the different domains and the different
levels. The first level of translation is to translate the names of the
visual object categories. These names have their representatives in nearly
all existing languages. For example, the name “hammer” for hammer category
that is represented by a given object can be expressed by the name from the
different languages such as Polish or French. Here is an example of the
name “hammer” given in the different languages: “鎚 - 中文,
Oamer - West-Vlams, Çekiç - Türkçe, Hammare - Svenska, Vasara - Suomi, Чекић - Српски / Srpski, Kladivo - Slovenčina, Hammer - Simple English, Молоток - Русский, Martelo - Português, Młotek – Polski, Marté - Nouormand, Hammar - Norsk, 槌-日本語
, Hamer - Nederlands, Plaktukas-Lietuvių, Malleus - Latina, Hamar - Íslenska, Martelo - Ido, Čekić - Hrvatski, Marteau - Français, Martelo - Esperanto, Martillo
- Español, Σφυρί
- Ελληνικά
, Der Hammer - Deutsch, Hammer - Dansk, Kladivo - Česky, Martell
– Català”.
It should be noticed
that translation needs to take into account the system of signs that is
used to write the name.
Explanation
One of the important
aspects of understanding is ability to explain not only a meaning of different
concepts (categories) but also meaning of the complex world phenomena or
meaning of the object from the world of culture. At this stage of research
explanation of SUS is
referring to the different aspects of the category of the visual objects.
Explanation assumes that only selected aspects of the visual objects will
be used in formulation of the explanatory text. Explanatory text includes
the explanatory patterns. Explanatory pattern for the visual object
consists of the following forms: P1: Explain how object is made, P2: Explain how object works, P3:
Explain how to use object.
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