Expert Systems

In terms of functionality, an 'expert system' can be defined as a program that relays on a bank of knowledge to perform certain specific tasks, which can be sometimes difficult, and are usually solved by the human expert in the field. The performances of an intelligent program depend primarily on the 'quality' of the knowledge base (KB) and the organization of the knowledge, which should allow the problem to be solved within an acceptable period. The part of the expert system, which performs the reasoning function, is called the 'inference engine (IE)'. This chapter considers the main characteristics that qualify a program as an expert system. Expert systems offer many advantages over a human expert. They contain these modules: the knowledge base, database, the IE, knowledge acquisition, and the software interfaces with the expert or application engineer, knowledge engineer, and user.