Overview

This chapter deals with artificial intelligence, expert systems and certain other advanced developments in computer aiding. The aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the field and an appreciation of the sorts of problem which are tackled, the types of technique developed, the terminology used and the applications made.

Accounts of artificial intelligence (AI) include Artificial Intelligence (Winston, 1984), Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Charniak and McDermott, 1985), Introduction to Knowledge Based Systems (Frost, 1986), Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (Patterson, 1990), The Elements of Artificial Intelligence (Tanimoto, 1990) and Encyclopaedia of Artificial Intelligence (Shapiro, 1992).

An important area of AI is expert systems. A large proportion of the AI applications in the process industries are of this nature. Expert systems are therefore given particular attention in this chapter.

Most accounts of AI are written in a style that makes extensive use of lines or sections of computer programs. For the most part this practice has not been adopted here. The aim has been to couch explanations in natural language. Some limited use has been made of program-type material, however, purely in order to give a feel for the approaches taken. The expressions principally used are related to the predicate calculus. This has influenced the order of treatment of the subjects in the chapter. The account of programming languages is placed after the account of predicate logic but before most of the other topics where program-type material may be...