Automatic Interpretation of Depiction Conventions in Sketched Diagrams

Abstract

Diagrams are used in many educational settings to convey physical and spatial information. Sketching is used, in turn, to test students' understanding of course concepts. The availability of Tablet PCs offer an exciting opportunity to create intelligent tutoring systems which automatically provide students with feedback on sketched work, and to create systems which can capture knowledge via interaction with people. However, for such systems to provide useful and relevant feedback, the software must be able to interpret diagrams that students have drawn. Interpreting diagrams correctly requires an understanding of some basic depiction conventions common in diagrammatic representation. Here we describe how to combine general semantic information about objects in sketched diagrams with geometric information from the sketch to aid in the interpretation of regions and edges. This system is implemented as an extension to the CogSketch sketch understanding system.