Physics Problem Solving
The ISAAC program, written in 1975, solves rigid body statics problems stated in English. On an IBM RS/6000, it can read, understand, solve, and draw a diagram for a textbook physics problem in about 1/10 second. Our more recent research in physics problem solving involves formalizing a problem that is stated informally and then deriving a solution from the formal model. Programs have been written to understand problems stated by a combination of English text and a diagram. Our current research involves representation of the formal models chosen for a problem and selection of appropriate models for an informally stated problem.
People
Gordon Novak Faculty novak [at] cs utexas edu
Publications
Conversion of Units of Measurement 1995
Gordon S. Novak Jr., IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, Vol. 21, 8 (1995), pp. 651-661.
Diagrams for Solving Physical Problems 1995
Gordon Novak, In Diagrammatic Reasoning: Cognitive and Computational Perspectives, Glasgow, Janice and Narayanan, N. Hari and Chandrasekaran, B. (Eds.), pp. 753-774, Boston, MA 1995. AAAI Press / MIT Press.
Generating Programs from Connections of Physical Models 1994
Gordon S. Novak Jr., In Proc. 10th Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications (CAIA-94), pp. 224-230, San Antonio, TX, March 1994.
Diagrams and Text as Computer Input 1993
Gordon Novak and William Bulko, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Vol. 4, 4 (1993), pp. 161-175.
Representation of Models for Expert Problem Solving in Physics 1991
Hyung Joon Kook and Gordon Novak, IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 3, 1 (1991), pp. 48-54.
Understanding Natural Language with Diagrams 1990
Gordon Novak and William Bulko, In Proc. National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-90), pp. 465-470, Boston, MA, August 1990.
Research on Expert Problem Solving in Physics 1980
Gordon Novak and Agustin Araya, In Proc. First Annual National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-80), Stanford, CA, August 1980.
Representations of Knowledge in a Program for Solving Physics Problems 1977
Gordon Novak, In Proc. 5th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-77), pp. 286-291, Cambridge, MA, August 1977.
Computer Understanding of Physics Problems Stated in Natural Language 1976
Gordon Novak, American Journal of Computational Linguistics, 53 (1976).
Labs
Automatic Programming