HECODES: a framework for HEterogeneous COoperative distributed expert systems

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Abstract

Cooperation between human experts is important when solving many complex problems and communication between the experts is essential for such cooperation. Cooperation between computerised expert systems is equally essential when dealing with complex problems. The software system described in this paper, HECODES (HEterogeneos COoperative Distributed Expert Systems), is a framework used to realize cooperation between distributed heterogeneous expert systems (ESs).

HECODES consists of a centralized control system, a blackboard system, and front-end processors. All parts of HECODES are specified (and implemented) using knowledge-based programming techniques and so they are domain-independent. HECODES can integrate a variety of pre-existing ESs using a variety of kinds of cooperation. The ESs can be heterogeneous with respect to control strategy, knowledge representation, and programming language. A prototype has been implemented using Common Lisp on a network of DEC VAX machines some of which are 60 miles apart.

This paper presents the architecture of HECODES and describes the approach it takes to the provision of cooperation, knowledge-based scheduling, domain-independent communication, deadlock treatment, homomorphic transformation of heterogeneous inexact reasoning models, and the synthesis of solutions.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Chengqi Zhang received the B.S. degree in computer science in 1982 from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and the M.S. degree in computer science in 1985 from Jilin University, Changchun, China. He enrolled in a Ph.D at the University of Ulster, U.K., in 1988 and then transferred to the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1989. He was a lecturer from 1986 to 1988 at Jilin University, China, and is a lecturer in 1990 at the University of New England, Australia. He has published over 20 papers in both English and Chinese in the areas of knowledge-based systems, distributed expert systems and second generation expert systems. He is the coauthor of the book Principles of Knowledge Engineering, published by the Jilin University Publisher, 1988.

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    David Bell has been Professor of Computing at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland since 1986. He graduated in Pure Maths from Queen's University, Belfast in 1969 and worked in Data Processing in industry for three years before moving into the academic world. His Masters degree was for research in Language Design and his PhD for work on storage and access strategies for Databases. For some years he has been taking an increasingly active interest in Artificial Intelligence topics relevant to his primary interest in Database. He has authored or co-authored about 100 papers for journals and conferences and some books. He is co-author of two books to be published in 1991 which exemplify his current research interests. They are on Evidential Theory and Distributed Databases, respectively.

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