Tasks
Monitoring
Monitoring is a particular case of interpretation, and consists of the continuous comparison of the values of the input signals or data and values that act as normality criteria or standards. In the field of predictive maintenance, Expert Systems are used primarily as diagnostic tools. The aim is for the program to be able to determine at all times the operating status of complex systems, anticipating possible incidents that may occur. Thus, using a computational model of a human expert's reasoning, it provides the same results that said expert would achieve.
Design
Design is the process of specifying a description of an artifact that satisfies several characteristics from a number of knowledge sources. The design is conceived in different ways:.
• - Engineering design is the use of scientific principles for maximum economy and efficiency.
• - Industrial design seeks to rectify engineering omissions, it is a conscious attempt to bring form and visual order to hardware engineering where technology does not provide these characteristics.
SEs in design see this process as a problem of searching for an optimal or adequate solution. The alternative solutions can be known in advance or can be generated automatically by testing different designs to verify which of them meet the requirements requested by the user. This technique is called “generation and testing”, therefore these SEs are called selection. In application areas, the test is terminated when the first solution is found; However, there are more complex problems in which the objective is to find the optimal solution.
Planning
Planning is the realization of plans or sequences of actions and is a particular case of simulation. It is composed of a simulator and a control system. The final effect is the ordering of a set of actions in order to achieve a global objective.
The problems presented by planning using SE are the following:
• - There are unforeseeable consequences, so various plans must be explored and explained.
• - There are many considerations that must be valued or include a weight factor.
• - There are usually interactions between plans with various subgoals, so compromise solutions must be chosen.
• - Frequent work with uncertainty, since most of the data we work with are more or less probable but not certain.
• - It is necessary to use diverse sources such as databases.
Control
A control system participates in carrying out interpretation, diagnosis and repair tasks sequentially. With this, it is possible to drive or guide a process or system. Control systems are complex due to the number of functions they must handle and the large number of factors they must consider; This growing complexity is another of the reasons that point to the use of knowledge, and therefore of ES.
It is worth clarifying that control systems can be open loop, if the feedback or the transition from one process to another is carried out by the operator, or closed loop if the operator does not have to intervene in any part of it.
Repair, correct or therapy.
Repair, correction, therapy or treatment consists of the proposal of the corrective actions necessary to resolve a problem. The SEs under repair have to meet various objectives, such as:
• - Repair as quickly and economically as possible.
• - Order of repairs when several have to be carried out.
• - Avoid the side effects of the repair, that is, the appearance of new breakdowns due to the repair.
Simulation
Simulation is a technique that consists of creating models based on facts, observations and interpretations on the computer, in order to study their behavior by observing the outputs for a set of inputs. Traditional simulation techniques require mathematical and logical models, which describe the behavior of the system under study. The use of ES for simulation is motivated by the main characteristic of ES, which is its ability to simulate the reasoning of a human expert, which is a complex process.
In the application of SE for simulation, five possible configurations must be differentiated:
• - An SE can have a simulator in order to check the solutions and, if necessary, rectify the process it follows.
• - A simulation system can contain an SE as part of it and therefore the SE does not necessarily have to be simulation.
• - An SE can control a simulation process, that is, the model is in the knowledge base of the SE and its evolution is a function of the fact base, the knowledge base and the inference engine, and not of a set of arithmetic-logical equations.
• - An SE can be used as an advisor to the user and the simulation system.
• - An SE can be used as a mask or front-end system of a simulator so that the user receives an explanation and justification of the processes.
Instruction
An instructional system will track the learning process. The system detects errors either from a knowledgeable person and identifies the appropriate remedy, that is, it develops a teaching plan that facilitates the learning process and the correction of errors.
Information recovery
ES, with their ability to combine information and rules of action, have been seen as one of the possible solutions to the processing and retrieval of information, not just documentary information. The 1980s were rich in research and publications on experiments of this order, interest that has not yet diminished.
What differentiates this system from a traditional information retrieval system is that the latter are only capable of retrieving what exists explicitly, while an SE must be able to generate non-explicit information, reasoning with the elements given to it. But the capacity of ES in the field of information retrieval is not limited to retrieval. They can be used to help the user, in selecting information resources, in filtering responses, etc. An SE can act as an intelligent intermediary that guides and supports the work of the end user.
• - knowledge management.
• - knowledge engineering.
• - speech recognition.
• - hospital information systems.
• - Expert systems in real applications (English).
• - Semantic Networks and Intelligent Agents (English).
• - Expert Systems and Probabilistic Network Models (Spanish).
• - Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project.
• - Expert systems, what they are, how they work and how they are classified.
• - Expert Systems creation language based on CommonKADS.
• - Language to implement expert systems with algebraic models.
• - Basic concepts about expert systems.
• - Expert systems in medicine (general information).