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This book presents the selected results of research in a newly established area of scientific research which we call machine understanding. Machine understanding is based on further development of the shape understanding system (SUS) that was described in our previous books titled "Shape Understanding System: the First Steps toward the Visual Thinking Machines" and "Shape Understanding System: Knowledge Implementation and Learning". This is the third book that presents the results of research in the area of thinking and understanding, carried out by authors in the newly founded the Queen Jadwiga Research Institute of Understanding. Machine understanding is the term introduced by authors to denote understanding by a machine (SUS) and is referring to the new area of research the aim of which is investigating the possibility of building the machine with the ability to understand. SUS, as the machine that is designed to have the ability to think and understand, learns both knowledge and skills in the process of learning is called the knowledge implementation described in book [103]. A machine to be able to understand needs to some extent mimic human understanding and for this reason machine understanding is based on the assumption that the results of understanding by the machine (SUS) can be evaluated according to the rules applied for evaluation human understanding. The important part of machine understanding approach is investigation of the different forms of explanations how to solve a problem (text problem) or explanations of the causes and context of an object or phenomenon. Machine understanding is based on further development of the shape understanding system (SUS) that is the implementation of the shape understanding method described in our previous books.

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