A real-time knowledge-based system for plowing support

The real time expert system SUPER is proposed to develop a plowing support system called SUPERVISOR. The SUPERVISOR is a real time control of a tractor integrating several software modules (man machine interface, expert module, sensor control software etc.) and hardware (sensors, electronic command boxes, microprocessor etc.). The expert module in the SUPERVISOR handles abnormal events during the plowing and maintains the knowledge bases according to the human experts. The knowledge bases are distributed into three knowledge based systems and embedded in a C++ and real time multitasking kernel which handles all the real time functions. The SUPERVISOR was evaluated using a simulation package and a set of rules of the actual expertise. The first prototype tractor was tested in a real field with the SUPERVISOR system in December 1993