Alternative descriptions in line drawing analysis

摘要

The paper presents an approach to the formation of structural descriptions of idealized line drawings of geometrical shapes. Emphasis is placed on the generation of alternative descriptions of the drawings, the order in which the alternatives appear being in approximate correspondence with the relative ease of human perception of the particular articulation. Precise definitions of the objects and relations used are given and details are presented of a program which successfully describes drawings according to the required criteria. The method employed is to classify the intersections of drawings into various types and to postulate various possible configurations of objects and relations which could exist at each intersection, the descriptive procedure being to verify these hypotheses. Alternative descriptions are then generated by considering different combinations of the possible configurations.