Techniques for Sensor-Based Diagnosis

This paper describes a system called PDS, a forward chaining, rule-based architecture designed for the online, realtime diagnosis of machine processes. Two issues arise in the application of expert systems to the analysis of sensor-based data: spurious readings and sensor degradation. PDS implements techniques called retrospective analysis and meta-diagnosis as solutions to these problems. These techniques and our experiences in knowledge acquisition in a large organization, and the implementation of PDS as a portable diagnostic tool are described.