Intelligent Systems Safety Reliability And Maintainability Issues

This book is a collection of some of the papers that were presented during a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues" that was held in Kusadasi, Turkey during August 24- 28, 1992. Attendance at this workshop was mainly by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community. Many of the participants were internationally recognized leaders in the topic of the workshop. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together a highly distinguished group of people with the express purpose of debating where the issues of safety, reliability and maintainability place direct and tangible constraints on the development of intelligent systems. As a consequence, one of the major debating points in the ARW was the definition of intelligence, intelligent behaviour and their relation to complex dynamic systems. Two major conclusions evolved from the ARW are: 1. A continued need exists to develop formal, theoretical frameworks for the architecture of such systems, together with a reflection on the concept of intelligence. 2. There is a need to focus greater attention to the role that the human play in controlling intelligent systems. The workshop began by considering the typical features of an intelligent system. The complexity associated with multi-resolutional architectures was then discussed, leading to the identification of a necessity for the use of a combinatorial synthesis/approach. This was followed by a session on human interface issues.

Current issues and approaches in the reliability and safety analysis of dynamic process systems are the subject of this book. The authors of the chapters are experts from nuclear, chemical, mechanical, aerospace and defense system industries, and from institutions including universities, national laboratories, private consulting companies, and regulatory bodies. Both the conventional approaches and dynamic methodologies which explicitly account for the time element in system evolution in failure modeling are represented. The papers on conventional approaches concentrate on the modeling of dynamic effects and the need for improved methods. The dynamic methodologies covered include the DYLAM methodology, the theory of continuous event trees, several Markov model construction procedures, Monte Carlo simulation, and utilization of logic flowgraphs in conjunction with Petri nets. Special emphasis is placed on human factors such as procedures and training.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First Pacific Rim International Conference on Multiagents, PRIMA '98, held in Singapore in November 1998 during PRICAI '98. The 13 revised full papers presented have been carefully reviewed for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on multiagent systems design, coordination platforms, and network application platforms; they address various current issues ranging from theorectical foundations to advanced applications in several areas.

Complex high-technology devices are in growing use in industry, service sectors, and everyday life. Their reliability and maintenance is of utmost importance in view of their cost and critical functions. This book focuses on this theme and is intended to serve as a graduate-level textbook and reference book for scientists and academics in the field. The chapters are grouped into five complementary parts that cover the most important aspects of reliability and maintenance: stochastic models of reliability and maintenance, decision models involving optimal replacement and repair, stochastic methods in software engineering, computational methods and simulation, and maintenance management systems. This wide range of topics provides the reader with a complete picture in a self-contained volume.

The NATO sponsored Advanced Study Institute 'The Biology and Tech nology of Intelligent Autonomous Agents' was an extraordinary event. For two weeks it brought together the leading proponents of the new behavior oriented approach to Artificial Intelligence in Castel Ivano near Trento. The goal of the meeting was to establish a solid scientific and technological foun dation for the field of intelligent autonomous agents with a bias towards the new methodologies and techniques that have recently been developed in Ar tificial Intelligence under the strong influence of biology. Major themes of the conference were: bottom-up AI research, artificial life, neural networks and techniques of emergent functionality. The meeting was such an extraordinary event because it not only featured very high quality lectures on autonomous agents and the various fields feeding it, but also robot laboratories which were set up by the MIT AI laboratory (with a lab led by Rodney Brooks) and the VUB AI laboratory (with labs led by Tim Smithers and Luc Steels). This way the participants could also gain practical experience and discuss in concreto what the difficulties and achievements were of different approaches. In fact, the meeting has been such a success that a follow up meeting is planned for September 1995 in Monte Verita (Switzerland). This meeting is organised by Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich).

The chapters of this book summarize the lectures delivered du ring the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Computational Methods in Mechanisms, that took place in the Sts. Constantin and Elena Resort, near Varna, on the Bulgarian Coast of the Black Sea, June 16-28, 1997. The purpose of the ASI was to bring together leading researchers in the area of mechanical systems at large, with special emphasis in the computational issues around their analysis, synthesis, and optimization, during two weeks of lectures and discussion. A total of 89 participants from 23 count ries played an active role during the lectures and sessions of contributed papers. Many of the latter are being currently reviewed for publication in specialized journals. The subject of the book is mechanical systems, Le. , systems composed of rigid and flexible bodies, coupled by mechanical means so as to constrain their various bodies in a goal-oriented manner, usually driven under computer con trol. Applications of the discipline are thus of the most varied nature, ranging from transportation systems to biomedical devices. U nder normal operation conditions, the constitutive bodies of a mechanical system can be consid ered to be rigid, the rigidity property then easing dramatically the analysis of the kinematics and dynamics of the system at hand. Examples of these systems are the suspension of a terrestrial vehicle negotiating a curve at speeds within the allowed or recommended limits and the links of multiaxis industrial robots performing conventional pick-and-place operations.

Soft computing is a consortium of computing methodologies that provide a foundation for the conception, design, and deployment of intelligent systems and aims to formalize the human ability to make rational decisions in an environment of uncertainty and imprecision. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in 1996 on soft computing and its applications. The distinguished contributors consider the principal constituents of soft computing, namely fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, genetic computing, and probabilistic reasoning, the relations between them, and their fusion in industrial applications. Two areas emphasized in the book are how to achieve a synergistic combination of the main constituents of soft computing and how the combination can be used to achieve a high Machine Intelligence Quotient.

Can we make machines that think and act like humans or other natural intelligent agents? The answer to this question depends on how we see ourselves and how we see the machines in question. Classical AI and cognitive science had claimed that cognition is computation, and can thus be reproduced on other computing machines, possibly surpassing the abilities of human intelligence. This consensus has now come under threat and the agenda for the philosophy and theory of AI must be set anew, re-defining the relation between AI and Cognitive Science. We can re-claim the original vision of general AI from the technical AI disciplines; we can reject classical cognitive science and replace it with a new theory (e.g. embodied); or we can try to find new ways to approach AI, for example from neuroscience or from systems theory. To do this, we must go back to the basic questions on computing, cognition and ethics for AI. The 30 papers in this volume provide cutting-edge work from leading researchers that define where we stand and where we should go from here.