Entry Date:
September 16, 2003

Early Processing in Support of Sketch Understanding

Principal Investigator Randall Davis

Co-investigator Howard Shrobe


Freehand sketching is a natural and crucial part of everyday human interaction, especially important in design, yet is unsupported by current design automation software. We are working to combine the flexibility and ease of use of paper and pencil with the processing power of a computer, to produce a design environment that feels as natural as paper, yet is considerably smarter. One of the most basic steps in accomplishing this is converting the original digitized pen strokes in the sketch into the intended geometric objects. We have implemented a system that combines multiple sources of knowledge to provide robust early processing for freehand sketching.