The importance of implicit and explicit knowledge in a pilot's associate system

Abstract

It is pointed out that fielding an operational pilot's associate (PA) will require both implicit and explicit representations of knowledge. Speed and memory performance requirements for PA will be aided by the use of implicit representations of knowledge. Acquiring and maintaining the large knowledge bases for PA will, by contrast, be aided by having explicit knowledge representations. Such explicit representations are being investigated in a 10 person-year research project sponsored by the Wright Research and Development Center. A critical contribution of this research has been to develop concepts that make machine learning applicable to real-time control and execution systems such as pilot's associate. The authors describe how machine learning techniques can automatically transform explicit representations into the implicit representations required by PA. >