UNIT V

Advanced Topics: Game Playing: Minimax search procedure - Adding alpha-beta cutoffs.

Expert System: Representation - Expert System shells - Knowledge Acquisition.

Robotics: Hardware - Robotic Perception – Planning - Application domains.

Two Marks

1. Define expert system.

An expert system is a computer program that simulates the thought process of a human
expert to solve complex decision problems in a specific domain.
An expert system is an interactive computer-based decision tool that uses both facts and
heuristics to solve difficult decision problems based on knowledge acquired from an expert.

2. What are applications of expert systems?

• Interpreting and identifying
• Predicting
• Diagnosing
• Designing
• Planning
• Monitoring
• Debugging and testing
• Instructing and training
• Controlling

3. What are the distinguishing characteristics of programming languages needed for

expert systems work?
• Efficient mix of integer and real variables
• Good memory-management procedures
• Extensive data-manipulation routines
• Incremental compilation
• Tagged memory architecture
• Optimization of the systems environment
• Efficient search procedures

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4. How are expert systems are organized?
1. Knowledge base consists of problem-solving rules, procedures, and intrinsic data relevant
to the problem domain.
2. Working memory refers to task-specific data for the problem under consideration.
3. Inference engine is a generic control mechanism that applies the axiomatic knowledge in
the knowledge base to the task-specific data to arrive at some solution or conclusion.

5. What are the Needs for Expert Systems?

1. Human expertise is very scarce.
2. Humans get tired from physical or mental workload.
3. Humans forget crucial details of a problem.
4. Humans are inconsistent in their day-to-day decisions.
5. Humans have limited working memory.
6. Humans are unable to comprehend large amounts of data quickly.
7. Humans are unable to retain large amounts of data in memory.
8. Humans are slow in recalling information stored in memory.
9. Humans are subject to deliberate or inadvertent bias in their actions.
10. Humans can deliberately avoid decision responsibilities.
11. Humans lie, hide, and die.

6. What are the effectiveness in implementing human-like decision processes?

1. Are algorithmic in nature and depend only on raw machine power
2. Depend on facts that may be difficult to obtain
3. Do not make use of the effective heuristic approaches used by human experts
4. Are not easily adaptable to changing problem environments
5. Seek explicit and factual solutions that may not be possible

7. What are the Benefits of Expert Systems?

1. Increase the probability, frequency, and consistency of making good decisions
2. Help distribute human expertise
3. Facilitate real-time, low-cost expert-level decisions by the nonexpert
4. Enhance the utilization of most of the available data
5. Permit objectivity by weighing evidence without bias and without regard for the users
personal and emotional reactions
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6. Permit dynamism through modularity of structure
7. Free up the mind and time of the human expert to enable him or her to concentrate on
more creative activities
8. Encourage investigations into the subtle areas of a problem

8. Write short notes on HEURISTIC REASONING?

Human experts use a type of problem-solving technique called heuristic reasoning.
Commonly called rules of thumb or expert heuristics, it allows the expert to arrive at a good
solution quickly and efficiently. Expert systems base their reasoning process on symbolic
manipulation and heuristic inference procedures that closely match the human thinking
process. Conventional programs can only recognize numeric or alphabetic strings and
manipulate them only in a preprogrammed manner.

9. Write short notes on Search Control Methods

All expert systems are searching intensive. Many techniques have been employed to make
these intensive searches more efficient. Branch and bound, pruning, depth-first search, and
breadth-first search are some of the search techniques that have been explored. Because of
the intensity of the search process, it is important that good search control strategies be used
in the expert systems inference process.

10. Write short notes on Forward Chaining

This method involves checking the condition part of a rule to determine whether it is true or
false. If the condition is true, then the action part of the rule is also true. This procedure
continues until a solution is found or a dead end is reached. Forward chaining is commonly
referred to as data-driven reasoning.

11. Write short notes on Backward Chaining

Backward chaining is the reverse of forward chaining. It is used to backtrack from a goal to
the paths that lead to the goal. Backward chaining is very good when all outcomes are known
and the number of possible outcomes is not large. In this case, a goal is specified and the
expert system tries to determine what conditions are needed to arrive at the specified goal.
Backward chaining is thus also called goal-driven.

12. Write short notes on Data Uncertainties

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Expert systems are capable of working with inexact data. An expert system allows the user to
assign probabilities, certainty factors, or confidence levels to any or all input data. This
feature closely represents how most problems are handled in the real world. An expert
system can take all relevant factors into account and make a recommendation based on the
best possible solution rather than the only exact solution.

13. What is robotics?

"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts,

tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a
variety of tasks”

14. How does robots percepts? Or what is reception?

Perception is the process by which robots map sensor measurements into internal
representations of the environment. Perception is difficult because in general the sensors are
noisy, and the environment is partially observable, unpredictable, and often dynamic

15. How does robots pan to move?

In robotics, decisions ultimately involve motion of effectors. The point–to –point

motion problem is to deliver the robot or its end-effector to a designated target location. A
greater challenge is the compliant motion problem, in which a robot moves while being in
physical Contact with an obstacle. An example of compliant motion is a robot manipulator
that screws in a light bulb, or a robot that pushes a box across a table top.

16. What is Swarm intelligence?

Swarm intelligence research originates from work into the simulation of the
emergence of collective intelligent behaviors of real ants. Ants are able to find good solutions
to the shortest path problems between the nest and a food source by laying down, on their
way back from the food source, a trail of an attracting substance––a pheromone. Based on
the pheromone level communication, the shortest path is considered that with the greatest
density of pheromone and the ants will tend to follow the path with more pheromone

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17. What is ant system and ant colony system?
Inspired by the food-seeking behavior of real ants, the ant system [1, 2] is a
cooperative population-based search algorithm. As each ant construct a route from nest to
food by stochastically following the quantities of pheromone level, the intensity of laying
pheromone will bias the path-choosing decision-make of subsequent ants.

18. What are the essential characteristics that is need for a robot?

A robot has these essential characteristics:

 Sensing First of all your robot would have to be able to sense its surroundings. It
would do this in ways that are not unsimilar to the way that you sense your
surroundings. Giving your robot sensors: light sensors (eyes), touch and pressure
sensors (hands), chemical sensors (nose), hearing and sonar sensors (ears), and taste
sensors (tongue) will give your robot awareness of its environment.
 Movement A robot needs to be able to move around its environment. Whether rolling
on wheels, walking on legs or propelling by thrusters a robot needs to be able to
move. To count as a robot either the whole robot moves, like the Sojourner or just
parts of the robot moves, like the Canada Arm.

 Energy A robot needs to be able to power itself. A robot might be solar powered,
electrically powered, battery powered. The way your robot gets its energy will
depend on what your robot needs to do.

 Intelligence A robot needs some kind of "smarts." This is where programming enters
the pictures. A programmer is the person who gives the robot its 'smarts.' The robot
will have to have some way to receive the program so that it knows what it is to do.

19. What is a sensor?

Sensors are the perceptual interface between robots and their environments. Passive
sensors. Such as cameras are true observers of the environment: they capture signals that
are generated by other sources in the environment. Active sensors, such as sonar, send
energy into the environment

20. What is an Effectors?

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 Effectors are the means by which robots move and change the shape of their bodies.
To understand the design of effectors,, it will help to talk about motion and shape in the
abstract, using the concept of a degree of freedom(DOF).

21. What is Expert system shell?

A rule-based, expert system maintains a separation between its Knowledge-base and
that part of the system that executes rules, often referred to as the expert system shell. The
system shell is indifferent to the rules it executes.

22. What is Meta data in Knowledge Base?

An expert system is, typically, composed of two major components, the Knowledge-
base and the Expert System Shell. The Knowledge-base is a collection of rules encoded as
metadata in a file.

23. Explain the shell portion in software modules

The shell portion includes software modules whose purpose it is to,

 Process requests for service from system users and application layer modules;
 Support the creation and modification of business rules by subject matter experts;

 Translate business rules, created by a subject matter experts, into machine-readable

forms;

 Execute business rules; and

 Provide low-level support to expert system components (e.g., retrieve metadata from
and save metadata to knowledge base, build Abstract Syntax Trees during rule
translation of business rules, etc.).

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 Unit V – 11 Marks

1. Explain minimax search procedure - Adding alpha-beta cutoffs in Game Playing

(Apr/May '14)(Nov/dec'14)(Apr'15)(Nov'15)

Adversarial Search
Competitive environments, in which the agents’ goals are in conflict, give rise to
adversarial search problems- often known as games. In AI, “games” are usually of a rather
specialized kind – in which there are two agents whose actions must alternate and in which
the utility values at the end of the game are always equal and opposite.
A game can be formally defined as a kind of search problem with the following components:

– The initial state, which includes the board position and identifies the player to move.
– A successor function, which returns a list of (move, state) pairs, each indicating a
legal move and the resulting state.
– A terminal test, which determines when the game is over. States where the game has
ended are called terminal states.
– A utility function, which gives a numeric value for the terminal states.
The initial state and the legal moves for each side define the game tree for the game. The
following figure shows part of the game tree for tic-tac-toe. From the initial state, MAX has
nine possible moves. Play alternates between MAX’s placing an X and MIN’s placing an O
until we reach leaf nodes corresponding to terminal states such that one player has three in a
row or all the squares are filled.

Game tree (2-player, deterministic, turns)

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MINIMAX
Given a game tree, the optimal strategy can be determined by examining the minimax value
of each node, which we write as MINIMAX-VALUE (n). The minimax value of a node is the
utility of being in the corresponding state, assuming that both players play optimally from
there to the end of the game.

• Perfect play for deterministic games

• Idea: choose move to position with highest minimax value
= best achievable payoff against best play
• E.g., 2-ply game:

Here, the first MIN node, labeled B, has three successors with values 3, 12, and 8, so its
minimax value is 3. The minimax algorithm computes the minimax decision from the current
state.

Minimax algorithm

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Properties of minimax
– Complete? Yes (if tree is finite)
– Optimal? Yes (against an optimal opponent)
– Time complexity? O(bm):the maximum depth of the tree is m, and there are b legal
moves at each point

 Space complexity? O(bm) (depth-first

– With "perfect ordering," time complexity = O(bm/2)
 doubles depth of search
– exploration)
– For chess, b ≈35, m ≈100 for "reasonable" games
 exact solution completely infeasible

ALPHA-BETA PRUNING

The problem with minimax procedure is that the number of game states it has to examine is
exponential in the number of moves. We can cut it in half using the technique called alpha-
beta pruning. When applied to a standard minimax tree, it returns the same move as
minimax would, but prunes away branches that cannot possibly influence the final decision.

Consider again the two-ply game tree. The steps are explained in the following figure. The
outcome is that we can identify the minimax decision without ever evaluating two of the leaf
nodes.

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α-β pruning example

The value of the root node is given by

MINIMAX-VALUE(root) = max(min(3,12,8), min(2,x,y), min(14,5,2))

= max(3,min(2,x,y),2)

=max(3,z,2) where z<=2

=3
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x and y: two unevaluated successors

z: minimum of x and y

Properties of α-β
– Pruning does not affect final result
– Good move ordering improves effectiveness of pruning
– A simple example of the value of reasoning about which computations are relevant (a
form of meta reasoning)

Why is it called α-β?

– α is the value of the best (i.e., highest-value) choice found so far at any choice point
along the path for max
– β is the value of the best (i.e., lowest-value) choice found so far at any choice point
along the path for min
– If v is worse than α, max will avoid it
 prune that branch

Alpha-beta search updates the values of α and β as it goes along and prunes the remaining
branches at a node as soon as the value of the current node is known to be worse than the
current α or β value for MAX or MIN respectively. The effectiveness of alpha-beta pruning
is highly dependent on the order in which the successors are examined. The algorithm is
given below:

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The α-β algorithm

2. Explain Expert System its Expert System shells and Knowledge Acquisition.
(Nov/dec'14)

Knowledge Acquisition

Expert Systems (ES), also called Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) or simply Knowledge
Systems (KS), are computer programs that use expertise to assist people in performing a
wide variety of functions, including diagnosis, planning, scheduling and design. ESs are
distinguished from conventional computer programs in two essential ways (Barr, Cohen et
al. 1989):s

1. Expert systems reason with domain-specific knowledge that is symbolic as well as

numerical;
2. Expert systems use domain-specific methods that are heuristic (i.e., plausible) as well
as algorithmic

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The technology of expert systems has had a far greater impact than even the expert systems
business. Expert system technology has become widespread and deeply embedded. As
expert system techniques have matured into a standard information technology, the most
important recent trend is the increasing integration of this technology with conventional
information processing, such as data processing or management information systems.

The Building Blocks of Expert Systems

Every expert system consists of two principal parts: the knowledge base; and the reasoning,
or inference, engine.

The knowledge base of expert systems contains both factual and heuristic knowledge. Factual
knowledge is that knowledge of the task domain that is widely shared, typically found in
textbooks or journals, and commonly agreed upon by those knowledgeable in the particular
field.

Heuristic knowledge is the less rigorous, more experiential, more judgmental knowledge of
performance. In contrast to factual knowledge, heuristic knowledge is rarely discussed, and
is largely individualistic. It is the knowledge of good practice, good judgment, and plausible
reasoning in the field. It is the knowledge that underlies the "art of good guessing."

Knowledge representation formalizes and organizes the knowledge. One widely used
representation is the production rule, or simply rule. A rule consists of an IF part and a THEN
part (also called a condition and an action). The IF part lists a set of conditions in some logical
combination. The piece of knowledge represented by the production rule is relevant to the
line of reasoning being developed if the IF part of the rule is satisfied; consequently, the
THEN part can be concluded, or its problem-solving action taken. Expert systems whose
knowledge is represented in rule form are called rule-based systems.

Another widely used representation, called the unit (also known as frame, schema, or list
structure) is based upon a more passive view of knowledge. The unit is an assemblage of
associated symbolic knowledge about an entity to be represented. Typically, a unit consists
of a list of properties of the entity and associated values for those properties.

Since every task domain consists of many entities that stand in various relations, the
properties can also be used to specify relations, and the values of these properties are the

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names of other units that are linked according to the relations. One unit can also represent
knowledge that is a "special case" of another unit, or some units can be "parts of" another
unit.

The problem-solving model, or paradigm, organizes and controls the steps taken to solve the
problem. One common but powerful paradigm involves chaining of IF-THEN rules to form a
line of reasoning. If the chaining starts from a set of conditions and moves toward some
conclusion, the method is called forward chaining. If the conclusion is known (for example, a
goal to be achieved) but the path to that conclusion is not known, then reasoning backwards
is called for, and the method is backward chaining. These problem-solving methods are built
into program modules called inference engines or inference procedures that manipulate and
use knowledge in the knowledge base to form a line of reasoning.

The most important ingredient in any expert system is knowledge. The power of expert
systems resides in the specific, high-quality knowledge they contain about task domains. AI
researchers will continue to explore and add to the current repertoire of knowledge
representation and reasoning methods. But in knowledge resides the power. Because of the
importance of knowledge in expert systems and because the current knowledge acquisition
method is slow and tedious, much of the future of expert systems depends on breaking the
knowledge acquisition bottleneck and in codifying and representing a large knowledge
infrastructure.

Expert system shell (Nov'13)

A rule-based, expert system maintains a separation between its Knowledge-base and that
part of the system that executes rules, often referred to as the expert system shell. The
system shell is indifferent to the rules it executes. This is an important distinction, because it
means that the expert system shell can be applied to many different problem domains with
little or no change. It also means that adding or modifying rules to an expert system can
effect changes in program behavior without affecting the controlling component, the system
shell.

The language used to express a rule is closely related to the language subject matter experts
use to describe problem solutions. When the subject matter expert composes a rule using
this language, he is, at the same time, creating a written record of problem knowledge, which
can then be shared with others. Thus, the creation of a rule kills two birds with one stone; the
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rule adds functionality or changes program behavior, and records essential information
about the problem domain in a human-readable form. Knowledge captured and maintained
by these systems ensures continuity of operations even as subject matter experts (i.e.,
mathematicians, accountants, physicians) retire or transfer.

Furthermore, changes to the Knowledge-base can be made easily by subject matter experts
without programmer intervention, thereby reducing the cost of software maintenance and
helping to ensure that changes are made in the way they were intended. Rules are added to
the knowledge-base by subject matter experts using text or graphical editors that are
integral to the system shell. The simple process by which rules are added to the knowledge-
base is depicted in Figure 1.

Finally, the expert system never forgets, can store and retrieve more knowledge than any
single human being can remember, and makes no errors, provided the rules created by the
subject matter experts accurately model the problem at hand.

EXPERT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

An expert system is, typically, composed of two major components, the Knowledge-base and
the Expert System Shell. The Knowledge-base is a collection of rules encoded as metadata in
a file system, or more often in a relational database. The Expert System Shell is a problem-
independent component housing facilities for creating, editing, and executing rules. A
software architecture for an expert system is illustrated in Figure 2.

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The shell portion includes software modules whose purpose it is to,

 Process requests for service from system users and application layer modules;
 Support the creation and modification of business rules by subject matter experts;

 Translate business rules, created by a subject matter experts, into machine-readable

forms;

 Execute business rules; and

 Provide low-level support to expert system components (e.g., retrieve metadata from
and save metadata to knowledge base, build Abstract Syntax Trees during rule
translation of business rules, etc.).

3. Explain Robotics and its hardware, perception(nov'13)

Definition

"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or

specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of
tasks"

A robot has these essential characteristics:

 Sensing First of all your robot would have to be able to sense its surroundings. It
would do this in ways that are not unsimilar to the way that you sense your
16
 surroundings. Giving your robot sensors: light sensors (eyes), touch and pressure
sensors (hands), chemical sensors (nose), hearing and sonar sensors (ears), and taste
sensors (tongue) will give your robot awareness of its environment.
 Movement A robot needs to be able to move around its environment. Whether rolling
on wheels, walking on legs or propelling by thrusters a robot needs to be able to
move. To count as a robot either the whole robot moves, like the Sojourner or just
parts of the robot moves, like the Canada Arm.

 Energy A robot needs to be able to power itself. A robot might be solar powered,
electrically powered, battery powered. The way your robot gets its energy will
depend on what your robot needs to do.

 Intelligence A robot needs some kind of "smarts." This is where programming enters
the pictures. A programmer is the person who gives the robot its 'smarts.' The robot
will have to have some way to receive the program so that it knows what it is to do.

Robot Hardware

Sensors

Sensors are the perceptual interface between robots and their environments. Passive
sensors. Such as cameras are true observers of the environment: they capture signals that
are generated by other sources in the environment. Active sensors, such as sonar, send
energy into the environment.

Many mobile robots make use of range finders, which are sensors that measure the distance
to nearby objects. One common type is the sonar sensor, also known as and ultrasonic
transducer.

Some range sensors measure very short or very long distances. Close-range sensors include
tactile sensors such as whiskers, bumb panels, and touch-sensitive skin. At the other end of
the spectrum is the Global Positioning System (GPS), which measures the distance to
satellites that emit pulsed signals.

Effectors

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 Effectors are the means by which robots move and change the shape of their bodies.
To understand the design of effectors,, it will help to talk about motion and shape in the
abstract, using the concept of a degree of freedom(DOF).

The dynamic state of a robot includes one additional dimension for the rate of change
of each kinematic dimension.

The arm in Figure 25.3(a) has exactly six degrees of freedom. Created by five revolute
joints that generate rotational motion and one prismatic joint that generates sliding motion.

The car has 3 effective degrees of freedom but 2 controllable degrees of freedom. We
say a robot is non holonomic if it has more effective DOF s than controllable DOFs and
holonomic if the two numbers are the same.

For mobile robots, there exists a range of mechanisms for locomotion, including
wheels, tracks and legs. Differential drive robots possess two independently actuated wheels.

ROBOTIC PERCEPTION

Perception is the process by which robots map sensor measurements into internal
representations of the environment. Perception is difficult because in general the sensors are
noisy, and the environment is partially observable, unpredictable, and often dynamic. As a
rule of thumb, good internal representations have three properties: they contain enough
information for the robot to make the right decisions, they are structured such that can be
updated efficiently, and they are natural in the sense that internal variable correspond to
natural state variables in the physical world.

LOCALIZATION

Localization is a generic example of robot perception. It is the problem of determining

where things are. Localization is one of the most pervasive perception problems in robotics,
because knowledge about where things are is at the core of any successful physical
interaction.

The localization problem comes in three flavors of increasing difficulty. If the initial
pose of the object to be localized by is known, localization is a tracking problem. Tracking
problems are characterized by bounded uncertainly. More difficult is the global localization.

PLANNING TO MOVE

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 In robotics, decisions ultimately involve motion of effectors. The point–to –point
motion problem is to deliver the robot or its end-effector to a designated target location. A
greater challenge is the compliant motion problem, in which a robot moves while being in
physical Contact with an obstacle. An example of compliant motion is a robot manipulator
that screws in a light bulb, or a robot that pushes a box across a table top.

4.

QUESTION BANK & UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS

1. Using a neat block diagram, explain the architecture and the working of a rule based
expert system.
2. With suitable example, explain the working of INCLUDE systems.
3. Explain the Rule Based System Architecture.
4. Write short notes on:
a. Expert System Shell.
b. Knowledge System Building Tools.
5. Explain the Rule Based System Architecture in detail.
6. Discuss in detail about knowledge based system building tools
7. Explain non-productive system architecture in detail.
8. (a) Describe knowledge acquisition and validation in detail.
(b) Explain expert system shell in detail.
9. Explain Robotics

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