Solving everyday physical reasoning problems by analogy using sketches

Abstract

Understanding common sense reasoning about the physical world is one of the goals of qualitative reasoning research. This paper describes how we combine qualitative mechanics and analogy to solve everyday physical reasoning problems posed as sketches. The problems are drawn from the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test, which is used to evaluate technician candidates. We discuss sketch annotations, which define conceptual quantities in terms of visual measurements, how modeling decisions are made by analogy, and how analogy can be used to frame comparative analysis problems. Experimental results support the plausibility of this approach.