On the real-time aspects of embedded expert systems: Licentiate thesis

The aim of this thesis is to bring forward and examine the problems that the real time aspect gives to the development and use of expert system technology in an embedded environment. This is achieved in three steps: - The problems caused by the real time environment are brought forward and discussed in detail. Various approaches for coping with them are introduced and their strengths and weaknesses are examined - The features of tools for the development of real time expert systems are examined. - An architecture is outlined for building a real time expert system that can easily be embedded. The design is based on practical experience gained from work done at the Technical Research Centre of Finland. The outlined architecture shows that real time features can be built for the system by using a high level source language, a real time operating system, and a simple knowledge engineering tool that lacks advanced real time features. The main advantages of this approach are very high portability and compactness of the produced code, flexibility of the system, and a low tool price. The major disadvantage is that there is more work for the programmer to do.