Collaborative Assistant for Rapid Knowledge Formation and Reasoning

Abstract

Abstract : This research has developed a collaborative assistant for rapid knowledge formation and reasoning, called Disciple-RKF. Disciple-RKF enables a team of subject matter experts who do not have prior knowledge engineering experience to build an integrated knowledge base, with limited assistance from a knowledge engineer. Each subject matter expert teaches a personal Disciple-RKF agent while collaborating with it in solving specific problems. During this process, each Disciple-RKF agent learns from its expert and builds its knowledge base. All these knowledge bases are then merged into an integrated knowledge base for Disciple-RKF. Disciple-RKF has being successfully applied to develop knowledge-based agents for military center of gravity analysis which have been used in several courses at the US Army War College. Experimental results with Disciple-RKF demonstrate that the developed approach facilitates the acquisition of knowledge directly from subject matter experts and improves the knowledge base development process. The emphasis of this research was on acquiring expert's problem solving knowledge that is not normally represented in written documents. This task is complementary to that of acquiring knowledge that has already been expressed in textbooks or other documents.