A multi-functional knowledge based system to learn, apply and consult procedures

✍ Scribed by Pablo R de Buen; Sunil Vadera; Eduardo F Morales

• Book ID: 104361345
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 385 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0957-4174
• DOI: 10.1016/s0957-4174(98)00052-9

✦ Synopsis

One of the main challenges facing systems developers is to design systems with the flexibility and adaptability required to satisfy a professional user's needs. This paper presents a novel architecture and a knowledge representation scheme for a multi-functional adaptive system that support professional engineers that work with established procedures. The system achieves its multi-functionality by using a single knowledge representation scheme based on a set of modular networks. The developed representation is exploited by three operators that enable a user to learn, consult different procedures and solve problems. The representation also facilitates the automatic generation of problems and the identification of user errors. The integration of functionalities through a single representation produces a synergy that results in extra-functionality, flexibility and reduces the amount of development effort required. The system adapts to a user by using simple but efficient user modelling techniques that tailor the tutoring information. A rule-based mechanism is used to propose an agenda and a novel rule simplification algorithm is developed to help an expert to develop the rules for proposing the agenda. A prototype was developed and three civil engineering procedures were implemented to evaluate the architecture through scenarios and an empirical evaluation with real engineers.