John, thanks for the input.
>>>>> "JDP" == John Douglas Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
JDP> Stephan Heuel wrote:
>> So, the question of my post is: what name should be used for this
>> Perl module? [...] SUGR is an acronym for "Statistically Uncertain
>> Geometric Reasoning"
JDP> This module does not seem to do what is normally meant by
JDP> "reasoning". And it certainly could be used in domains other
JDP> than AI. [...]
While I agree with your second point to some extent, I wonder what AI
people normally mean by the term "reasoning". IMHO reasoning is the
process of performing deduction or induction given some
information. And this information can surely be geometric information.
Kapur and Mundy published a book [1] about geometric reasoning and
they argue that geometry played a big role in AI with respect to
theorem proving as early as in the 50's and 60's. Applications for
such things are robotics and motion planning, machine vision and solid
modeling, clearly all AI applications.
My point can be explained by an example: a robot must be able to deal
with uncertainty since it knows its position and the position of other
objects only up to some error, so it is not certain about its
position. Dealing with uncertainy means to (i) represent these errors,
(ii) propagate these errors when doing new movements and (iii) taking
them into account when making decisions, such as "Am I pointing to the
red button? Will I miss the button when I try to push it?". My module
tries to provide means to accomplish these tasks taking uncertainty
into account [2].
JDP> I would recommend something like Math::FuzzyGeometry. [...]
Well, pure statisticians generally don't like fuzzy words like fuzzy
[logic], though it's a nice buzz word. I would prefer to use our
acronym, therefore
Math::SUGR
would then be my favorite. Or maybe the Math::UncertainGeometry
(probably too long).
Thanks for reading this.
-Stephan
Footnotes:
[1] Not that I want you to know these guys, but here is the reference
to their book: "Geometric Reasoning", edited by Kapur, D. and Mundy,
J.L.; MIT Press 1989
[2] I have to add that I have not applied my module to this field
but to the field of machine vision.
--
Stephan Heuel fon: +49 228 73 2711
Institute for Photogrammetry fax: +49 228 73 2712
University of Bonn, Nussallee 15 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
53115 Bonn - GERMANY http://www.ipb.uni-bonn.de/~steve
