Expert System Case Study

I. INTRODUCTION
An Artificial Intelligence System created to solve problems in a particular domain is called an
Expert System. An expert system is a knowledge intensive program to solve the problem in a
domain that require considerable amount of technical expertise. An expert system is computer
program that simulates the judgment and behavior of a human or an organization that has expert
knowledge and experience in a particular field. Expert systems are an emerging technology ,past
applications range from MYCIN, used in the medical field to diagnose of bacterial infection and
effectively handles uncertain data, XCON/RI,used to configure computer systems. Dendral,does
the inferring process of structure elucidation of chemical compounds. Expert systems are
typically very domain specific.

The developer of such a system must limit his or her scope of the system to just what is needed
to solve the target problem. Special tools or programming languages are often needed to
accomplish the specific objectives of the system.

II. EXPERT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Expert system derives complex decisions from the combination of factual and heuristic
knowledge. In order for the computer to be able to retrieve and effectively use heuristic
knowledge, the knowledge must be organized in an easily accessible format that distinguishes
among data, knowledge, and control structures. The process of building expert systems is often
called knowledge engineering.

Building expert systems is generally an iterative process. The components and their interaction
will be refined over the course of numerous meetings of the knowledge engineer with the experts
and users. So the fundamental modules of expert system are:

1. Knowledge base a core module of expert system. It is a warehouse of domain specific

knowledge, consists of problem-solving rules, procedures, and intrinsic data relevant to the
problem domain. A knowledge base is created by knowledge engineers, who translate the
knowledge of real human experts into rules and strategies. These rules and strategies can change
depending on the prevailing problem scenario. The knowledge base constitutes the problem-
solving rules, facts, or intuition that a human expert might use in solving problems in a given
problem domain. The knowledge base is usually stored in terms of if–then rules(production rules
used in MYCIN,DENDRAL,XON).There are many others ways of representing the knowledge
ie logic, semantic nets, frames ,conceptual dependency, production rules and scripts.

2. WORKING MEMORY refers to task-specific data for the problem under consideration.
3. INFERENCE ENGINE is a generic control mechanism that act as “rule interpreter” applies
the axiomatic knowledge in the knowledge base to the task-specific data to arrive at some
solution or conclusion.

Recall the steps in the basic Recognize Act Cycle:

1. Match the premise patterns of the rules against elements in the working memory. Generally
the rules will be domain knowledge built into the system, and the working memory will contain
the case based facts entered into the system, plus any new facts that have been derived from
them.

2. If there is more than one rule that can be applied, use a conflict resolution strategy to choose
one to apply. Stop if no further rules are applicable.

3. Activate the chosen rule, which generally means adding/deleting an item to/from working
memory. Stop if a terminating condition is reached, or return to step 1.Early production systems
spent over 90% of their time doing pattern matching, but there is now a solution to this efficiency
problem

EXAMPLES OF EXPERT SYSTEM:

 1965 DENDRAL Stanford analyze mass spectrometry
 1965 MacSyma MIT symbolic mathematics
 1972 MYCIN Stanford Diagonsis of blood diseases
 1978 Digitalis MIT Digitalis therapy
 1979 PUFF Stanford pulmonary diseases
 1982 XCON DEC Computer configuration
 1986 ACES Aerospace satellite diagnosis
 1986 Delta GE diagnosis of diesel locomotives
 1992 Max NYNEX Telephone network troubleshooting

2.1 Uses of Expert Systems

1. Experts systems have vast quantity of domain specific knowledge.

2. Expert system plays three major role:Role of a problem solver,tutor and archive.

3. Experts systems are always available and can be used anywhere, any time.

4. Cost effective

5. Expert System has increased accessibility than human experts.

6. Expert system are highly advantageous in interdisciplinary domains.

7. Expert System are easy to develop and modify

8. Human experts are not 100% reliable or consistent as moods may lead to a default
assumptions or irrelevant.

2.2 Limitation of present Expert Systems

1. Limited domain specific knowledge.

2. Lack of knowledge representation mechanism.

3. User has to describe the problem in formal language only.

4. Systems are not always up to date.

5. Lack of understanding as “no common-sense”.

6. Experts needed to setup and maintain system.

7. Possibility of error as they don’t learn reason and cannot refine its own knowledge base as it
needs knowledge engineering.

8. Development cost may be too high as lot of recourses is needed today.

2.3 Expert System Applications

1. PUFF: Expert System for the interpretation of pulmonary function tests for patients with lung
disease.PUFF was probably the first AI system to have been used in clinical practice.It was
developed by Stanford University and Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center (Janice Aikins, John
Kunz, Ted Shortliffe, Robert Fallat) PUFF can diagnose the presence and severity of lung
disease and produce reports for the patient's file. PUFF was the first system developed using
EMYCIN (Essential MYCIN, van Melle, 1979). It included the domain-independent features of
MYCIN:

 rule interpreter
 explanation
 knowledge acquisition

2.SHYSTER is a legal expert system derived from the “Shyler” a slang word for Who acts in a
disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law and politics.
SHYSTER is a specific example of a general category of legal expert systems, broadly defined
as systems that make use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to solve legal problems. It was
developed at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1993. It was written as the
doctoral dissertation of James Popple under the supervision of Robin Stanton.
3. PROSPECTOR This expert system help in evaluation of the mineral potential of a geological
site or region.PROSPECTOR: consultation system to assist geologists working in mineral
exploration. It was developed by Hart and Duda of SRI International attempts to represent the
knowledge and reasoning processes of experts in the geological domain. It is intended user is an
exploration geologist in the early stages of investigating a possible drilling site

4. MYCIN: MYCIN was developed at Stanford University in the mid-1970s. It was designed to
aid physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of meningitis and bacteremia infections. MYCIN
was strictly a research system. Medical system for diagnosing blood disorders.

5.DESIGN ADVISOR: The Expert Design Advisor (EDA) is a decision-aided toolset for use by
systems engineers in facilitating the development of large, complex systems involving Mission
Critical Computing Resources (MCCR).Gives advice to designers of processor chips.

6.Dendral: It was an influential pioneer project in artificial intelligence (AI) of the 1960s, and
the computer software expert system that it produced. Its primary aim was to study hypothesis
formation and discovery in science. For that, a specific task in science was chosen: help organic
chemists in identifying unknown organic molecules, by analyzing their mass spectra and using
knowledge of chemistry. It was done at Stanford University by Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce G.
Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg, and Carl Djerassi, along with a team of highly creative research
associates and students. It began in 1965 and spans approximately half the history of AI research
.The software program Dendral is considered the first expert system because it automated the
decision-making process and problem-solving behavior of organic chemists.

III. EXPERT SYSTEM USED IN INDIA

1. Indian Institute of Horticultural Research Institute, Bangalore: The first software for use by the
grape cultivators was prepared by the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research Institute,
Bangalore. This spontaneous response made them to undertake similar software for providing
guidance to mushroom cultivators, which became extremely popular and a large number of
growers using it regularly for getting solutions to their problems. The Institute has launched into
an effort to give a comprehensive package of practices of about 148 horticulture crops for
cultivation in the 4 Southern states of Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

2.AGREX Center for Informatics Research and Advancement, Kerala has prepared an Expert
System called AGREX to help the Agricultural field personnel give timely and correct advice to
the farmers. These Expert Systems find extensive use in the areas of fertilizer application, crop
protection, irrigation scheduling, diagnosis of diseases in paddy and post harvest technology of
fruits and vegetables.

3.Farm Advisory System: Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, has developed the Farm
Advisory System to support agri-business management. The conversation between the system
and the user is arranged in such a way that the system asks all the questions from user one by one
which it needs to give recommendations on the topic of farm Management. The inputs are
encouraging and acceptance by farmers is very good.

4. TDP Technologies Pvt. Ltd. In Chennai is using MYCIN technique for diagnosing blood
disorders.

5. Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai is using PUFF for diagnosis of respiratory conditions.

IV. FUTURE PROSPECTIVE

Research is being going on to developing such an expert system, who can understand emotions
of people, can reason ,create new innovations itself and not only intelligent but judge the
intelligence of human being. To develop such type of system that can understand the
environment, maintain, update itself such expert system can be possible if there are large
knowledge base and good knowledge representation techniques.

REFERENCES
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