Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems: Next Generation Tools

Abstract Recent advances in research in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have resulted into noticeable operational applications in the field of expert systems. Although the first successes were mainly in the medical area, also in process control the expectations currently are very high. The tutorial will give an introduction to Artificial Intelligence in general, and will focus thereafter more onto expert systems. The general structure of such systems will be discussed and a survey of the appropriate languages and tools will be presented. Furthermore, an overview of the topics in process control will demonstrate where A.I. and expert systems could be introduced. Because most to-day operational systems are designed with a rule based methodology, this will be explained more in depth. An easy-to-use rule based system will be described and illustrated with appropriate examples. This will enable to explain important characteristics of expert systems. such as reasoning and inference methodologies, selection strategies, and conflict resolution. To conclude with, the operation of such systems will be illustrated in the field of the simulation of continuous dynamic systems. Such systems typically demonstrate the new formalism in the description and design of the control strategy when using these techniques.