SECTION THREE

DISCUSSION

3.1. Applications of Expert System

The range of application of expert system to commercial and industrial sector is so wide as to defy easy
characterization. The applications find their way into most fields and knowledge of work. They are varied
as helping sales persons sell modular factory built homes to helping National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) (Sarah,2019) plan the maintenance of a space shuttle in other to prepare for its
next flight. The application areas include:

3.1.1 Diagnosis and Troubleshooting Different Kinds of Devices and Systems.

This category is made up of systems that deduce fault and suggest actions to be taken to correct a
malfunctioning device or process. Expert System technology was applied first to one of the knowledge
areas, namely medical diagnosis, but diagnosis of engineered system rapidly overshadowed medical
diagnosis. There exist probably more diagnostic applications of expert system than any other type.

3.1.2 Planning and Scheduling

Systems that fall into this category analyze a set of one or potentially complex and interacting goals so
as to determine a set to achieve those goals, and/or provide a detailed temporal ordering of those
actions, taking into account personnel, material and other constraints. This class has enormous
commercial potential, which has been recognized. Examples involve airline scheduling of flights,
personnel, and gates; manufacturing job-shop scheduling and manufacturing process planning.

3.1.3 Configuration of Manufactured Objects from Subassemblies.

Configuration is a process that involves the synthesis of a solution of a problem from a given set of

elements related by a set of constraints. Historically, it is one of the most important applications of
expert systems. Computer companies initiated configuration applications in other to facilitate the
manufacture of semi-custom minicomputers. The techniques is used in various industries for instance,
manufacturing, modular home building and other problems involving complex engineering design and
manufacturing.
3.1.4 Financial Decision Making

Expert system techniques have been vigorously used by financial service industries. Programs that can
give advice have been designed to help bankers to determine whether to make loans to business and
individuals. Expert systems have been used by insurance companies to examine the risks a customer
presents to as to determine a price for insurance. A typical application in the financial markets is in
foreign exchange trading (FOREX).

3.1.5 Knowledge Publishing

This is a potentially explosive area, although it is relatively new. An Expert system has the primary
function of delivering knowledge that is relevant to user’s problem, in the context of the user’s problem.
The first is an advisor program that gives counsel to a user with regards to the appropriate grammatical
usage in a text. A tax advisor is the second; it accompanies a tax preparation program and gives advice

to user on tax strategy, individual tax policy and tactics.

3.1.6 Process Monitoring and Control

Systems in this category are used to analyze data in real-time from physical devices with the intent of
determining anomalies, predicting trends, and controlling for both and optimally and failure correction.
Steel making and oil refining industries are typical examples of industries that have real-time systems
that actively monitor process.

3.1.7 Design and Manufacturing

These systems render assistance in the design of physical devices and processes which ranges from high
level conceptual design of abstract entities to factory floor configuration of manufacturing process.

3.1.8 Education and Training

With the advent of expert systems and artificial intelligence, and their usage in various areas such as in
education, some popular expert systems have been implemented for education. They include: Computer
Aided Learning (CAL), Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) and Intelligent
Pascal Tutoring System (IPTS), Computer Aided Instruction focuses on problem solving and it is the most
popular expert system in the world. The ingenious idea f Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) was initiated
in USA and UK since 1950s. Computer Aided Instruction is still present and popular in European and
Asian Countries. Though Computer Aided Instruction s not regarded as a true expert system, it
stimulates the method of teaching of an experienced teacher. It will be able to tutor individual students
according to their learning capacities and speed. They are mostly used for distance learning and
independent study. CAI is in two ways depending on the usage: The first way is supplementing the class
teaching where the duration of the sessions are small and dependent on the teacher only. Another
approach is a situation where it substitutes a teacher and the sessions are normally bigger than the
duration.

3.1.9 Smart Computing

Self-monitoring, Analysis and reporting Technology (SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard
disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, so as to anticipate failures. It is a system
BIOS and hard disk feature that monitors its performance, disk spin up time, temperature, distance
between the head and the disk, and other mechanical activities of the hard disk so as to predict when
the disk is likely to fail (Jean, 2019).
The idea behind SMART is that many hard disk are predictable, and that computer users, given a heads-
up that their hard disk in on the verge of failing, will be able to recover data before the failure actually
happens (Chris, 2018).
It is estimated that over 94% of all new information produced in the world is stored on magnetic media,
most of it on physical disks. The drive vendors builds a logic into the drives to make them smart so that
the user gets warning signal as a predictive failure whenever the drive is about to go bad. The drive
monitors the number of error checking and correction (ECC) and based on the data analyzed, it can
predict failures (Venugopal & Patnaik, 2013).
In recent years, with the first development of smart transport system and data collection technology, a
large amount of transit smart card has been accumulated. The transit smart card data has the advantage
of detecting residents travel activities. It is computerized without human input like household survey,
and it records travelers travel data in daily, monthly and yearly period and could reflect many travel
details (Meikang, 2018).
Networking devices such as routers, routers and switches have been made smart. Routers have the
ability to learn addresses of computers and store them in their routing tables and determine the best
part to send packets. More so, network switches learn and store mapping relationship between mac
address and switch port in their mac table, this enable the switches to make decisions with respect to
which computer to forward data (Navid et al, 2015)
3.1.10 Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer simulated
environment. The term reality was initially coined in 1989 by Jaron Lanier. Originally, the term referred
to immersive virtual reality in which the user becomes fully immersed into artificial 3D world that is
completely generated by a computer. Through immersion, a user can gain a deeper understanding of
the virtual world’s behaviour and functionality. A wide range of virtual reality based application on such
immersive education, real time visualization of complex data (such as medical, engineering, weather),
telemedicine (such as drug design, medical imaging, and remote surgery), immersive multiplayer games,
and vehicle and aircraft design and simulation (Ralph & George, 2013).
Virtual reality simulators require special interface devices transmit the site, sound and sensations of
simulated world to the user. These devices can also record and send the speech and movements of the
participant to the simulation program, which enables users to sense and manipulate virtual object much
as they would to real objects. This natural style of interaction gives the participants the feeling that they
are immersed in a simulated world. For instance, an auto manufacturer can use virtual reality to help it
simulate and design factories (Stair & Reynolds, 2013).
Virtual reality can also refer to applications that are not fully immersive, such as mouse controlled
navigation through 3D environment on a graphics monitor, stereo viewing from the monitor through
stereo glasses and stereo projection systems. For instance, being used reality and computer simulation
to help design and build its Dreamliner 787. The company used 3D models from Dassault systems to
design and manufacture the new aircraft (Ralph & George, 2012).
The World Wide Web (WWW) has been revolution on the computing field since 1990. Expert system
developers realize the value to be gained by connecting their knowledge bases to the WWW interface.
At the simple end, an expert system uses text-based WWW interfaces to replace a text-based interface
that would be delivered in some other more proprietary way. For example, expert system was
developed in a class project and it is accessible on the WWW. At the other end, researchers are
developing virtual reality interfaces on top of the WWW that allows the user to be immersed in the
environment upon which the expert system is giving advice. For example, in ship emergency handling
with expert system support, a virtual reality interface supported on the WWW can be valuable.

3.1.11 Agriculture

Agricultural production system has been progressing into a compound business system that requires the
incorporation of knowledge and information from many various sources. In order to remain competitive,
the modern farmer often relies on agricultural specialists and advisors to get information for decision
making. Unfortunately, assistance of the agricultural expert is not always available when the farmer
needs. In order to assuage this problem, expert systems which emulate the decision making ability of
human experts (Kumar, 2014) were identified as a powerful tool with extensive in agriculture.

SECTION FOUR

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

4.1 Summary

An expert system is typically made up of a knowledge base which houses accumulated experience, and
interface engine which is a set of rules used to apply the knowledge base to a particular situation that is
described to the program and a user interface which allows a user to interact with the expert system.
When more knowledge are added to the knowledge base or the set of rules, then this can enhance the
system’s capabilities. Systems with machine learning experience are one of the current systems, these
systems improve their performance based on experience and exactly the way humans do.
The Stanford researchers tried to identify where that are complex and where expertise was highly
important. These domains include diagnosis of infectious disease and identifying unknown organic
molecules. Edward Feigenbaum and other early key contributors such as Randall Davis and Bruce
Buchanan introduced the early expert systems.
Expert systems have played a large role in any industries and financial services, such as healthcare,
customer service, telecommunications, transportation, video games, manufacturing, aviation,
agriculture, smart computing and education.
However, the software tools needed to build expert systems include Clips, Prolog, Lisp, VB 6, VB. Net,
Asp.Net. Php, Java, C#, Python etc.

CONCLUSION

Expert system play important role in our global world, it has a wide range of applications which include
smart computing, agriculture, troubleshooting etc. Its components include the knowledge base, user
interface and inference engine. It can use backward o forward chaining to arrive at decision and its
capability is improved by adding more knowledge to the knowledge base.
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