Algorithm

Figure 1: The things outside the shaded box are given to Galatea: a complete source problem an incomplete target problem, and the analogy between them. Galatea completes the analogical transfer and stores the new simage sequence for the target problem.

Figure 2: The fortress/tumor problem representation

The bottom series of simages in Figure 2 shows a representation of the solved fortress problem analog. The bottom left simage is the initial state of the problem. The top series of simages shows the target analog, the tumor problem. The darkly shaded box shows the output of the system. The first simage is all that is input of the tumor problem.

To make an analogical transfer, the source and target analogs must have an analogy between them. The analogy between the first tumor problem simage and the first fortress problem simage specifies maps between the components. To avoid over-complication of the figure, only one of these maps is shown, that between the left-road1 and left-body1.

Privits are transferred from the bottom series to the top: decompose and move.

Following is the control structure for our visual analogical transfer theory. We will describe the transfer of the first privit as a running example. The process in the abstract can be seen in Figure 1.

1. Identify the first simages of the target and analog problems.

2. Identify the privits and associated arguments in the current simage of the source analog. This step finds out how the source problem gets from the current simage to the next simage. In our example, the privit is decompose, with ``four'' as the number-of-resultants argument (not shown).

3. Identify the objects of the privits. The object of the privit is what object the privit acts on. For the decompose privit is the soldier-path1 (the thick arrow in the bottom left simage.)

4. Identify the corresponding objects in the target analog. The ray1 (the thick arrow in the top left simage) is the corresponding component of the source analog's soldier-path1, as specified by the analogical map between the simages (not shown). A single object can be mapped to any number of other objects. If the object in question is mapped to more than one other object in the target, then the privit is applied to all of them in the next step. If the privit arguments are components of the source simage, then their analogs are found as well. Else the arguments are transferred literally.

5. Apply the privit with the arguments to the target analog component. A new simage is generated for the target problem (top middle) to record the effects of the privit. The decompose privit is applied to the ray1, with the argument ``four.'' The result can be seen in the top middle simage in Figure 2. The new rays are created for this simage.

6. Map the original objects to the new objects in the target problem. A transform-connection and mapping are created between the target problem simage and the new simage (not shown). Maps are created between the corresponding objects. In this example it would mean a map between ray1 in the first top simage and the four rays in the second top simage. The privit is associated with the map, as shown in the Figure, so the target problem itself can be used as a possible source analog in the future.

7. Map the new objects of the target problem to the corresponding objects in the source problem. In this case the rays of the second target simage are mapped to soldier paths in the second source simage. This step is necessary for the later iterations (i.e. going on to another transformation and simage). Otherwise the system would have no way of knowing which parts of the target simage the later privits would operate on.

8. Check to see if goal conditions are satisfied. If they are, exit, and the problem is solved. If not, and there are further simages in the source series, set the current simage equal to the next simage and go to step 1. If there are no further simages, then exit and fail.