Automated knowledge acquisition for the surface-mount PWB assembly domain

Abstract

The development of knowledge-based (or expert) systems for the surface-mount printed wiring board (PWB) assembly domain requires the understanding and regulation of several complex tasks. While the knowledge base in an expert system serves as a storehouse of knowledge primitives, its design and development is a bottleneck in the expert system development life-cycle. Therefore the development of an automated knowledge acquisition (KA) facility (or KA tool) would facilitate the implementation of expert systems for any domain. This paper describes an automated KA tool that helps to elicit and store information in domain-specific knowledge bases for surface-mount PWB assembly. A salient feature of this research is the acquisition of uncertain information.