Qualitative Process Theory Using Linguistic Variables


Book Description

8. 5 Summary In this chapter we have identified three basic patterns of influences that lead to ambiguity in the QP analysis of the basic active furnace state. We have then shown how modification of these patterns, by adding equilibrium values and sensitivity annotations on influence arcs, could permit resolu tion of the ambiguities. Finally, we have described in detail the extensions needed to the basic influence resolution algorithm in QP theory to oper ate on these extended descriptions. We have also shown that the modified influence resolution algorithm corrects an error in Forbus' original method for combining influences. We have then presented an extended example in which introduction of equilibrium assumptions eliminates all ambigu ity in the influence resolution deduction. In the next chapter we extend these techniques further, by developing a qualitative perturbation analysis technique that permits us to answer "what ir' control questions; then we extend this technique to obtain quantitative, as well as qualitative, effects of hypothetical control actions. 8.




Abductive Inference Models for Diagnostic Problem-Solving


Book Description

Making a diagnosis when something goes wrong with a natural or m- made system can be difficult. In many fields, such as medicine or electr- ics, a long training period and apprenticeship are required to become a skilled diagnostician. During this time a novice diagnostician is asked to assimilate a large amount of knowledge about the class of systems to be diagnosed. In contrast, the novice is not really taught how to reason with this knowledge in arriving at a conclusion or a diagnosis, except perhaps implicitly through ease examples. This would seem to indicate that many of the essential aspects of diagnostic reasoning are a type of intuiti- based, common sense reasoning. More precisely, diagnostic reasoning can be classified as a type of inf- ence known as abductive reasoning or abduction. Abduction is defined to be a process of generating a plausible explanation for a given set of obs- vations or facts. Although mentioned in Aristotle's work, the study of f- mal aspects of abduction did not really start until about a century ago.




An Introduction to Fuzzy Control


Book Description

Fuzzy controllers are a class of knowledge based controllers using artificial intelligence techniques with origins in fuzzy logic. They can be found either as stand-alone control elements or as integral parts of a wide range of industrial process control systems and consumer products. Applications of fuzzy controllers are an established practice for Japanese manufacturers, and are spreading in Europe and America. The main aim of this book is to show that fuzzy control is not totally ad hoc, that there exist formal techniques for the analysis of a fuzzy controller, and that fuzzy control can be implemented even when no expert knowledge is available. The book is mainly oriented to control engineers and theorists, although parts can be read without any knowledge of control theory and may interest AI people. This 2nd, revised edition incorporates suggestions from numerous reviewers and updates and reorganizes some of the material.




Active Perception and Robot Vision


Book Description

Intelligent robotics has become the focus of extensive research activity. This effort has been motivated by the wide variety of applications that can benefit from the developments. These applications often involve mobile robots, multiple robots working and interacting in the same work area, and operations in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants. Applications in the consumer and service sectors are also attracting interest. These applications have highlighted the importance of performance, safety, reliability, and fault tolerance. This volume is a selection of papers from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in July 1989 with a focus on active perception and robot vision. The papers deal with such issues as motion understanding, 3-D data analysis, error minimization, object and environment modeling, object detection and recognition, parallel and real-time vision, and data fusion. The paradigm underlying the papers is that robotic systems require repeated and hierarchical application of the perception-planning-action cycle. The primary focus of the papers is the perception part of the cycle. Issues related to complete implementations are also discussed.




Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Techniques


Book Description

The purpose of the Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Techniques is to promote interaction between members of the AI community. It does this by announcing the existence of AI techniques, and acting as a pointer into the literature. Thus the AI community will have access to a common, extensional definition of the field, which will promote a common terminology, discourage the reinvention of wheels, and act as a clearing house for ideas and algorithms. The catalogue is a reference work providing a quick guide to the AI techniques available for different jobs. It is not intended to be a textbook like the Artificial Intelligence Handbook. Intentionally, it only provides a brief description of each technique, with no extended discussion of its historical origin or how it has been used in particular AI programs. The original version of the catalogue was hastily built in 1983 as part of the UK SERC-DoI, IKBS Architecture Study. It was adopted by the UK Alvey Programme and, during the life of the programme, was both circulated to Alvey grant holders in hard copy form and maintained as an on-line document. A version designed for the international community was published as a paperback by Springer-Verlag. All these versions have undergone constant revision and refinement. Springer-Verlag has agreed to reprint the catalogue at frequent intervals in order to keep it up to date and this is the third edition of their paperback version.




Intelligent Planning


Book Description

"The central fact is that we are planning agents." (M. Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reasoning, 1987, p. 2) Recent arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, it seems to be the case that people-the best exemplars of general intelligence that we have to date do a lot of planning. It is therefore not surprising that modeling the planning process has always been a central part of the Artificial Intelligence enterprise. Reasonable behavior in complex environments requires the ability to consider what actions one should take, in order to achieve (some of) what one wants and that, in a nutshell, is what AI planning systems attempt to do. Indeed, the basic description of a plan generation algorithm has remained constant for nearly three decades: given a desciption of an initial state I, a goal state G, and a set of action types, find a sequence S of instantiated actions such that when S is executed instate I, G is guaranteed as a result. Working out the details of this class of algorithms, and making the elabora tions necessary for them to be effective in real environments, have proven to be bigger tasks than one might have imagined.




Multiple Attribute Decision-Making Method Using Linguistic Cubic Hesitant Variables


Book Description

Linguistic decision making (DM) is an important research topic in DM theory and methods since using linguistic terms for the assessment of the objective world is very fitting for human thinking and expressing habits. However, there is both uncertainty and hesitancy in linguistic arguments in human thinking and judgments of an evaluated object. Nonetheless, the hybrid information regarding both uncertain linguistic arguments and hesitant linguistic arguments cannot be expressed through the various existing linguistic concepts.




AI Expert


Book Description




Urban Hydroinformatics


Book Description

This book is an introduction to hydroinformatics applied to urban water management. It shows how to make the best use of information and communication technologies for manipulating information to manage water in the urban environment. The book covers the acquisition and analysis of data from urban water systems to instantiate mathematical models or calculations, which describe identified physical processes. The models are operated within prescribed management procedures to inform decision makers, who are responsible to recognized stakeholders. The application is to the major components of the urban water environment, namely water supply, treatment and distribution, wastewater and stormwater collection, treatment and impact on receiving waters, and groundwater and urban flooding. Urban Hydroinformatics pays particular attention to modeling, decision support through procedures, economics and management, and implementation in both developed and developing countries. The book is written with post-graduates, researchers and practicing engineers who are involved in urban water management and want to improve the scope and reliability of their systems.




The Theory of the Knowledge Square: The Fuzzy Rational Foundations of the Knowledge-Production Systems


Book Description

The monograph is about a meta-theory of knowledge-production process and the logical pathway that connects the epistemic possibility to the epistemic reality. It examines the general conditions of paradigms for information processing and isolates the classical and fuzzy paradigms for comparative analysis. The sets of conditions that give rise to them are defined, stated and analyzed to abstract the corresponding sets of laws of thought. The fuzzy paradigm with its corresponding logic and mathematics is related to inexact symbolism for the defective information structure where the results of the knowledge production must satisfy the epistemic conditionality, composed of fuzzy conditionality and fuzzy-stochastic conditionality under the principle of logical duality with continuum. The classical paradigm with its corresponding logic and mathematics is related to exact symbolism for exact information structure where the vagueness component of the defectiveness is assumed away, and where the results of the knowledge production must satisfy no epistemic conditionality or at the maximum only the stochastic conditionality under the principle of logical dualism with excluded middle. It is argued that the epistemic path that links ontological space to the epistemological space is information. The ontological space is taken as the primary category of reality while the epistemological space is shone to be a derivative. Such information is universally defective and together with assumptions imposed guides the development of paradigms with their laws of thought, logic of reasoning, mathematics and computational techniques. The relational structure is seen in terms of logical trinity with a given example as matter-information-energy transformational trinity which is supported by the time trinity of past-present-future relationality. The book is written for professionals, researchers and students working in philosophy of science, decision-choice theories, economies, sciences, computer science, engineering, cognitive psychology and researchers working on, or interested in fuzzy paradigm, fuzzy logic, fuzzy decisions, and phenomena of vagueness and ambiguities, fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy-stochastic processes and theory of knowledge. It is further aimed at research institutions and libraries. The subject matter belongs to extensive research and development taking place on fuzzy phenomena and the debate between the fuzzy paradigm and the classical paradigm relative to informatics, synergetic science and complexity theory. The book will have a global appeal and across disciplines. Its strength, besides the contents, is the special effort that is undertaken to make it relevant and accessible to different areas of sciences and knowledge production.