The Knowledge Machine is a concept of Seymour Papert

Seymour Papert

Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....

, which is intended to enable children to explore any situation and engage them completely. Although Papert never clearly defined the Knowledge Machine, one interpretation is a virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

 device that allows the user to slip into any situation and have a simulated experience of that situation.

The Knowledge Machine (KM) is also a developed system at the University of Texas for knowledge representation

Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge...

 and reasoning within the artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

field. KM was developed and continues to be actively maintained by Peter Clark and Bruce Porter.