Sketch Recognition for Computer-Aided Design

Christopher F. Herot

Summary

The author presents a sketch recognition system for use in computer-aided design that attempts to infer user intention from information on how the user sketches strokes. Speed of a stroke is used to infer whether a stroke is a line, corner, or curve. Over-traced lines are replaced with a thicker to show emphasis from the the user. Using speed, line length, and density of lines around a point, lines that are meant to be connected but were not drawn as so are made connected (latched).

Herot concludes the paper with a section detailing how the user needs to be involved in the machine's inference of intention.

Discussion

What is presented in this paper is very similar to the previous Herot reading, but what makes this paper interesting to me is the final section. In the previous paper, he only brushed on the concepts that he goes into much more detail in the final section. He mentions the idea of coordinating "two concurrent processes" which is essentially the concept of mixed initiatives. His thoughts and ideas on this correlate closely with work that has come to light over the past 10 years. Particularly, the idea that the machine forms a model of the user and adjusts this model based on user interaction; while at the same time, the user is forming a model of the system and needs methods for providing feedback to the system to help the system mimic the user perceived model.