Developing real-time knowledge-based systems with PERFECT

Abstract

PERFECT (Programming EnviRonment For Expert systems Constrained in reasoning Time) is aimed at providing the necessary engineering support in real-time knowledge-based system development. PERFECT bridges the gap between the traditional analysis and design methodologies, and the implementation tools for these systems. It does so by providing the means to construct a knowledge model and to choose a suitable inference strategy. Subsequently the properties of the knowledge model and inference strategy may be analysed. For instance, it may be checked whether the knowledge model contains sufficient knowledge to diagnose a fault in an industrial process. Moreover, it may be checked whether the inference engine is able to provide an answer to a certain problem in time. If not, the analyser of PERFECT proposes an alternative structure of the knowledge model. When the constructed knowledge model and the chosen inference strategy show the required time efficiency, the compiler of PERFECT may translate them to an actual real-time knowledge based system in COGSYS. In addition, guidelines are provided with respect to the design of the human-machine interface. The resulting system is an instrument—a source of information that can be used by the human operator during problem-solving, rather than a prosthesis—a device that solves the entire problem by itself and presents the outcome to the human operator.