In a parallel machine with many thousands of processors the routing of information between processors is a key task, which turns out to require as much hardware and perhaps more sophistication than local computing itself. ...

This paper proposes an editing tool named TEMPEST (TEMPlate Editor for Structured Text) whose goal is to extend a text editing environment by using templates to incorporate into it some knowledge of the structure of the ...

The problem of automatically improving the performance of computer programs has many facets. A common source of program inefficiency is the use of abstraction techniques in program design: general tools used in a specific ...

The design of a program is rarely a straightforward mapping from the problem solution to the code. More frequently, fragments of high level concepts are distributed over one or more modules such that it is hard to identify ...

Molecular biologists use a variety of models when they predict the behavior of genetic systems. A discrete model of the behavior of individual macromolecular elements forms the foundation for their theory of each system. ...

This document is a draft copy of a portion of the Lisp Machine window system manual. It is being published in this form now to make it available, since the complete window system manual is unlikely to be finished in the ...

An iterative method of using occluding boundary information is proposed to compute surface slope from shading. We use a stereographic space rather than the more commonly used gradient space in order to express occluding ...

The research reported here concerns the principles used to automatically generate three-dimensional representations from line drawings of scenes. The computer programs involved look at scenes which consist of polyhedra and ...

Recognition of polyhedra by a heterarchical program is presented. The program is based on the strategy of recognizing objects step by step, at each time making use of the previous results. At each stage, the most obvious ...

This paper describes BUILD, a computer program which generates plans for building specified structures out of simple objects such as toy blocks. A powerful heuristic control structure enables BUILD to use a number of ...

The idea of planning and plan execution is just an intuition based decomposition. There is no reason it has to be that way. Most likely in the long term, real empirical evidence from systems we know to be built that way ...

CL1 is a prototyping language for programming a Connection Machine. It supports a model of the Connection Machine as a collection of tiny conventional machines (process elements), each with its own independent program counter.

In this paper we analyse several approaches to the design of Cooperative Algorithms for solving a general problem: That of computing the values of some property over a spatial domain, when these values are constrained (but ...

The MIT Mobile Robot Project began in January of 1985 with the objective of building machines that could operate autonomously and robustly in dynamically changing environments. We now have four working robots, each ...

We present several results characterizing two differential operators used for edge detection: the Laplacian and the second directional derivative along the gradient. In particular, (a)we give conditions for coincidence of ...

There has been a long-standing desire in computer science for a way of collecting and using libraries of standard software components. Unfortunately, there has been only limited success in actually doing this. We believe ...

How to guide for some of the printing utilities in the AI lab. Describes how TEX tiles are processed and how some illustrations may be merged into the final copy. Also describes how to use TEX to print on 8.5x14 (legal) ...

Several recent knowledge-representation schemes have used virtual copies for storage efficiency. Virtual copes are confusing. In the course of trying to understand, implement, and use Jon Doyle's SDL virtual copy mechanism, ...

AI problem solvers have almost always been given a complete and correct axiomatization of their problem domain and of the operators available to change it. Here I discuss a paradigm for problem solving in which the problem ...

This is a manual for complete beginners. It assumes no knowledge of the MIT computer systems. This guide will teach you how to log onto the computer called OZ, a DEC PDP-20 computer running the TWENEX (TOPS-20) operating ...