The current education systems in elementary schools are usually using traditional teaching methods such as paper and pencil or drawing on the board. The benefit of paper and pencil is their ease of use. Researchers have tried to bring this ease of use to computer-based educational systems through the use of sketch-recognition. Sketch-recognition allows students to draw naturally while at the same time receiving automated assistance and feedback from the computer. There are many sketch-based educational systems for children. However, current sketch-based educational systems use the same sketch recognizer for both adults and children. The problem of this approach is that the recognizers are trained by using sample data drawn by adults, even though the drawing patterns of children and adults are markedly different. We propose that if we make a separate recognizer for children, we can increase the recognition accuracy of shapes drawn by children. By creating a separate recognizer for children, we improved the recognition accuracy of children’s drawings from 81.25% (using the adults’ threshold) to 83.75% (using adjusted threshold for children). Additionally, we were able to automatically distinguish children’s drawings from adults’ drawings. We correctly identified the drawer’s age (age 3, 4, 7, or adult) with 78.3%. When distinguishing toddlers (age 3 and 4) from matures (age 7 and adult), we got a precision of 95.2% using 10-fold cross validation. When we removed adults and distinguished between toddlers and 7 year olds, we got a precision of 90.2%. Distinguishing between 3, 4, and 7 year olds, we got a precision of 86.8%. Furthermore, we revealed that there is a potential gender difference since our recognizer was more accurately able to recognize the drawings of female children (91.4%) than the male children (85.4%). Finally, this paper introduces a sketch-based teaching assistant tool for children, EasySketch, which teaches children how to draw digits and characters. Children can learn how to draw digits and characters by instructions and feedback.

Freehand sketching is a natural and crucial part of everyday humaninteraction, yet is almost totally unsupported by current user interfaces. With the increasing availability of tablet notebooks and pen based PDAs, sketchbased interaction has gained attention as a natural interaction modality.We are working to combine the flexibility and ease of use of paper and pencilwith the processing power of a computer, to produce a user interface fordesign that feels as natural as paper, yet is considerably smarter. One of themost basic tasks in accomplishing this is converting the original digitizedpen strokes in a sketch into the intended geometric objects. In this paper wedescribe an implemented system that combines multiple sources of knowledge toprovide robust early processing for freehand sketching. We also show how thisearly processing system can be used as part of a fast sketch recognition system with polynomial time segmentation and recognition algorithms.

Humans have always used sketches to explain the visual world. It is a simple and straight- forward mean to communicate new ideas and designs. Consequently, as in almost every aspect of our modern life, the relatively recent major developments in computer science have highly contributed to enhancing individual sketching experience. The literature of sketch related research has witnessed seminal advancements and a large body of interest- ing work. Following up with this rich literature, this dissertation provides a holistic study on sketches through three proposed novel models including sketch analysis, transfer, and geometric representation. The first part of the dissertation targets sketch authorship recognition and analysis of sketches. It provides answers to the following questions: Are simple strokes unique to the artist or designer who renders them? If so, can this idea be used to identify authorship or to classify artistic drawings? The proposed stroke authorship recognition approach is a novel method that distinguishes the authorship of 2D digitized drawings. This method converts a drawing into a histogram of stroke attributes that is discriminative of authorship. Extensive classification experiments on a large variety of datasets are conducted to validate the ability of the proposed techniques to distinguish unique authorship of artists and designers. The second part of the dissertation is concerned with sketch style transfer from one free- hand drawing to another. The proposed method exploits techniques from multi-disciplinary areas including geometrical modeling and image processing. It consists of two methods of transfer: stroke-style and brush-style transfer. (1) Stroke-style transfer aims to transfer the style of the input sketch at the stroke level to the style encountered in other sketches by other artists. This is done by modifying all the parametric stroke segments in the input, so as to minimize a global stroke-level distance between the input and target styles. (2) Brush-style transfer, on the other hand, focuses on transferring a unique brush look of a line drawing to the input sketch. In this transfer stage, we use an automatically constructed input brush dictionary to infer which sparse set of input brush elements are used at each location of the input sketch. Then, a one-to-one mapping between input and target brush elements is learned by sparsely encoding the target sketch with the input brush dictionary. The last part of the dissertation targets a geometric representation of sketches, which is vital in enabling automatic sketch analysis, synthesis and manipulation. It is based on utilizing the well known convolutional sparse coding (CSC) model. We observe that CSC is closely related to how line sketches are drawn. This process can be approximated as the sparse spatial localization of a number of typical basic strokes, which in turn can be cast as a non-standard CSC model that forms a line drawing from parametric curves. These curves are learned to optimize the fit between the model and a specific set of line drawings. Each part of the dissertation shows the utility of the proposed methods through a variety of experiments, user studies, and proposed applications.

This thesis is a sketch grammar of 'Are'are, a Southeast Solomonic language belonging to the Oceanic family, spoken mainly in the southern part of Malaita by approximately 18 000 speakers. Previous academic works documenting and describing 'Are'are are almost nonexistent. This sketch grammar is based on data collected during consultation sessions with the main language consultant in New Zealand and during six weeks of fieldwork in Hauporo, West 'Are'are and Honiara in the Solomon Islands. 'Are'are is a head marking language with SVO word order whose noteworthy features include: (i) distinction between alienable and inalienable possession marking, (ii) several valency-increasing devices available to a single verb stem, (iii) verb serialization, (iv) three categories of prepositions distinguished by different patterns of object marking and (v) remarkably small consonant inventory compared to other languages spoken on Malaita. After the introduction to the language and its speakers, Chapter 2 lays out the sound system and introduces the major phonological and morphophonemic processes. Chapter 3 introduces the grammatical profile of the language, including a discussion on tense, aspect and mood and lexical categories attested in the language. Nouns and the structure of the noun phrase are discussed in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 is concerned with verbs and the verb phrase. Prepositions are examined in Chapter 6. The structure of verbal and non-verbal clauses is the topic of Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 describes complex constructions such as coordination, subordination and serial verb constructions. The appendices provide a preliminary report on the language vitality, a brief discussion on dialects of 'Are'are and also a sample text.

Orientador: Aniceh Farah Neves / Banca: Olympio José Pinheiro / Banca: Lígia Maria Sampaio de Medeiros Gomes / Resumo: O modo como o homem desenvolve seus objetos sofreu uma profunda transformação ao longo de sua história, passando da produção artesanal à produção industrial no final do séc. XVIII, dando origem ao projeto industrial, e assim, ao design. Surge com isso a necessidade de metodologias de trabalho que organizem o processo, orientando assim a criação. A partir do final do séc. XX uma nova transformação ocorre, com a inserção da informática nesse processo, modificando as possibilidades de manipulação do projeto. Com a evolução tecnológica ocorrem também transformações culturais. Atualmente existe uma valorização de "resultados imediatos", reflexo de uma sociedade ansiosa, que acaba menosprezando o valor dos processos de forma geral. Assim, técnicas tradicionais de projetação são muitas vezes substituídas ou ignoradas diante das novas tecnologias. Além desse problema de adequação aos processos tradicionais, existe uma imprecisão de linguagem para designar os tipos de desenhos utilizados nesse processo, o que acaba dificultando seu entendimento e consequentemente a própria prática. Para essa pesquisa optou-se pelo termo desenho expressional como forma de abranger os termos esboço, rascunho, croqui, rafe, sketch e esquete. De modo geral, são recursos tradicionais que são sub-utilizados no processo criativo. Através de entrevistas com os alunos do 5º e 6º termo do Curso de Graduação em Desenho Industrial da Faculdade de Arquitetura, Artes e Comunicação, da Universidade Estadual Paulista "Julio de Mesquita Filho", campus de Bauru/SP, procurou-se identificar como esse recurso - o desenho expressional - vem sendo visto e utilizado e qual a sua importância no processo de projeto. / Abstract: The way like man develop the goals had a huge change along the history, starting with the handmade production until the industrial production in the 18th century, originating the industrial project and also the design. Based on this, begins the necessity of methodologies of work that organize the process and guide the creation. From the end of 20th century, a news transformation happened: insertion of computing in all this process, changing the possibilities of project handling. Due to technologic evolution some cultural transformations have occured also. Nowadays there is an appreciation of "direct results", reflection of an anxious society that in general despises the values of processes. Thereby, traditional techniques of project are just ignored or replaced by news technologies over. Besides this problem of traditional methods adjustment, there is a language inaccuracy to assign the kinds of drawings used in this process, that difficult comprehension and practice. For this research, the term "expressional drawing" was chosen to include another terms: sketch, draft, croquet and rough draft. Generally, these are traditional resources sub used during the creative process. Some interviews were made with students of 5th and 6th semesters of Design graduation course, from Architecture, Arts and Communication College, "Julio de Mesquita Filho" University, Bauru campus, São Paulo state. Based on this interviews, it was possible to identify how this resource - expressional drawing - has been used and seen and how much important is this during the process of project. / Mestre

This work describes the process from sketch to functional textile. Starting points are thoughts about the transition from sketch to fabric, and the possibility to sketch before decisions are made about the quality of the final fabric. The first result of this study is the final product, a hand weaved clothing in thin wool that fulfils set demands. The second result is the knowledge that it is possible to make a purposeful sketch without knowing the final product. / Uppsatsnivå: C

Este estudo se dá a partir de uma série de trabalhos em desenho, fotografia, instalação e livro de artista, desenvolvidos entre 2012 e 2014, tendo como eixo um arquivo de desenhos realizados em situações cotidianas. Interessa aqui pensar a prática constante do desenho como ação cotidiana em pequenos suportes (folhas avulsas, cadernos de formatos modestos), sua acumulação através dos anos, sua utilização como extensão física da memória. O trabalho acontece na construção de novas totalidades a partir de fragmentos que compõem recortes transversais no tempo, em uma série de propostas para dar a ver esses desenhos, no diálogo sugerido pelo encontro de imagens realizadas em momentos distantes entre si ou no encontro destas imagens com o espaço da prática, assim como nas fricções e ambiguidades entre os desenhos de esboço, da ordem do privado, e trabalhos finalizados de ordem pública. / The present study’s starting point is a series of works in drawing, photography, installation and artist's book, which have been developed from 2012 to 2014, having as na axis the archive of drawings made in everyday situations. The focus here is to think about the constant practice of drawing as a daily action on small structures (single sheets, modest format notebooks), its accumulation over the years, its use as an extension of physical memory. The work takes place in the construction of new wholes from fragments through transverse cuts in time, in a series of proposals for seeing these drawings, the suggested dialogue between images made at distinct moments or in relation to the atelier, and the friction between the sketches, that are private, and finished works, which are public.

Sketches are commonly used in the early stages of design. Our previous system allows users to sketch mechanical systems that the computer interprets. However, some parts of the mechanical system might be too hard or too complicated to express in the sketch. Adding speech recognition to create a multimodal system would move us toward our goal of creating a more natural user interface. This thesis examines the relationship between the verbal and sketch input, particularly how to segment and align the two inputs. Toward this end, subjects were recorded while they sketched and talked. These recordings were transcribed, and a set of rules to perform segmentation and alignment was created. These rules represent the knowledge that the computer needs to perform segmentation and alignment. The rules successfully interpreted the 24 data sets that they were given.

Artifacts made by humans, such as items of furniture and houses, exhibit an enormous amount of variability in shape. In this paper, we concentrate on models of the shapes of objects that are made up of fixed collections of sub-parts whose dimensions and spatial arrangement exhibit variation. Our goals are: to learn these models from data and to use them for recognition. Our emphasis is on learning and recognition from three-dimensional data, to test the basic shape-modeling methodology. In this paper we also demonstrate how to use models learned in three dimensions for recognition of two-dimensional sketches of objects. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Automatic recognition and digitization of the features found in raster images of 2D topographic maps has a long research history. Very little such work has focused on creating and working with alternatives to the classic isoline-based topographic map.This thesis presents a system that generates 3D scenes from a 2D diagram format designed for user friendliness; with more geometric expressiveness and lower ink usage than classic topographic maps. This thesis explains the rationale for and the structure of the system, and the difficulties encountered in constructing it. It then describes a user study to evaluate the language and the usability of its various features, and draws future research directions from it.