Machine learning, a sub-area of Artificial Intelligence (AI), investigates the mechanisms by which knowledge is acquired. A learning machine is a computer system that has the ability to mimic human's intelligence process of knowledge acquisition and skill refinement. The project, A Learning Program (ALPS), has been initiated to develop a program capable of learning knowledge, and applying them to solve problems.
This thesis deals with the unit learning subsystem which is a part of the learning program that concentrates on learning of units. These units include simple units such as "feet" and "meter", and units that are composed of other units such as "meter/second' and "meter2". An interface is provided to demonstrate that units have been learned correctly. The design of the system is done using object oriented paradigms, and expressed in UML notations. The system has been implemented using C++ on Unix. The system also performs consistency checks for problem solving.