Qualitative reasoning about fluids and mechanics

Abstract

Understanding people's commonsense knowledge about physical world is a fundamental problem in building intelligent systems. If this knowledge can be represented and used by computers, they can duplicate people's ability to understand and interact with the world. Qualitative physics is the attempt to capture and formalize this knowledge. An important aspect of qualitative reasoning is the ability to derive the possible behaviors of a given physical system from the structure of the system, using minimal initial information.

This thesis investigates qualitative domain theories and reasoning techniques which will enable computers to analyze the qualitative behaviors of physical systems which include both mechanical mechanisms and fluids, such as internal combustion engines and hydraulic lift pumps. We have developed a domain theory which integrates richer models of mechanics, fluids, and geometry than previous research in qualitative physics. These theories and inference techniques are embodied in QSA, a program that produces possible behaviors of physical systems.