EDISON Project

The EDISON project is one of developing computational models of creative reasoning and problem-solving with respect to mechanical devices. The overall approach has been that of representing devices as symbolic structures i.e. a naive mechanics approach. The focus of our research has been on representational and processing constructs to support the following cognitive tasks 1 comprehension of natural language text describing mechanical devices, 2 simulation of device behavior through manipulating symbolic representations of device motions, 3 improvisation through adapting one device for use in an alternate domain, and 4 device invention through mutation of device features. These four tasks serve to test the viability of EDISON device representations. In carrying out this research, the project leaders were influenced both by the computational and psychological literature. There are four areas of computational modeling from which the EDISON project has drawn inspiration 1 Qualitative physics, 2 Natural Language Processing NLP for comprehension and invention, 3 Memory Organization for Case-Based Recall, 4 and Automated Discovery.