CardWorld -- a testbed for modeling natural-language understanding

Copyright 2010, 2012 James A. Mason

CardWorld is my name for a limited pragmatic domain in which to build and test working models of language understanding in natural languages such as English.  It consists of simulated playing cards on a simulated card table, along with one or more simulated "card agents" with which a human user of CardWorld can converse in English. 

Among other things, the human user can ask the other card agent(s) to shuffle cards and piles of cards, turn them over,  stack them, and spread them out face up or face down on the card table.  The human user can also directly manipulate the cards and piles of cards on the table, pointing to them (by mouse click), moving them (by mouse drag for cards and mouse shift-drag for piles of cards), and turning them over (by mouse control-click for cards).   Pointing can also be done by stylus or by touch screen, hardware permitting.  Conversation with the other card agents in CardWorld can be done by keyboard input and also by voice input using a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

CardWorld will be a continuing project.  CardWorld1, CardWorld1a, and CardWorld2 are its first implementations in Java, using Augmented Syntax Diagrams (ASD grammars and decision networks)
.  CardWorld2 is the latest release, with the most capabilities so far.  Many further extensions are planned for CardWorld; see CardWorld Next Steps below for details.

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last updated 2012 Sept 4