Decision Making And Problem Solving Methods In Automation Technology

This book is concerned with Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts and techniques as applied to industrial decision making, control and automation problems. The field of AI has been expanded enormously during the last years due to that solid theoretical and application results have accumulated. During the first stage of AI development most workers in the field were content with illustrations showing ideas at work on simple problems. Later, as the field matured, emphasis was turned to demonstrations that showed the capability of AI techniques to handle problems of practical value. Now, we arrived at the stage where researchers and practitioners are actually building AI systems that face real-world and industrial problems. This volume provides a set of twenty four well-selected contributions that deal with the application of AI to such real-life and industrial problems. These contributions are grouped and presented in five parts as follows: Part 1: General Issues Part 2: Intelligent Systems Part 3: Neural Networks in Modelling, Control and Scheduling Part 4: System Diagnostics Part 5: Industrial Robotic, Manufacturing and Organizational Systems Part 1 involves four chapters providing background material and dealing with general issues such as the conceptual integration of qualitative and quantitative models, the treatment of timing problems at system integration, and the investigation of correct reasoning in interactive man-robot systems.

Through expanded intelligence, the use of robotics has fundamentally transformed the business industry. Providing successful techniques in robotic design allows for increased autonomous mobility, which leads to a greater productivity and production level. Rapid Automation: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides innovative insights into the state-of-the-art technologies in the design and development of robotics and their real-world applications in business processes. Highlighting a range of topics such as workflow automation tools, human-computer interaction, and swarm robotics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for computer engineers, business managers, robotic developers, business and IT professionals, academicians, and researchers.

Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Control documents the proceedings of the IFAC Workshop held in Clyne Castle, Swansea, UK, 21-23 September 1988. It includes two keynote addresses that discussed architectural issues for expert systems in real-time control; the problem of representing knowledge and reasoning; and the problems encountered in obtaining such information. Other papers contained in these proceedings are representative of the major research bodies active throughout the world in the application of AI techniques in real-time control, although it was inevitable that a Europe-based conference would highlight the work of the European groups. While AI is clearly still in the process of establishing itself, it is undoubtedly a major new area of engineering endeavor. Practical experience is still relatively limited, and many of the results discussed at this event were obtained through simulation or, in a few cases, from reduced practical experience. The importance, though, lies in the fact that many countries are pouring extensive resources into the attempt to control difficult processes by using AI techniques. The wide cross section of interest was demonstrated by the fact that many diverse industries were represented at the workshop—ranging from power-systems control to telecommunications, and into the steel industry.