Introduction to knowledge-based systems

In the last decade or so, expert systems also called knowledge-based systems have made their way from research laboratories into the real world. Applications have been, and are continuing to be, developed in areas as diverse as business, medicine, manufacturing, defence, astronomy, science and engineering. Such applications perform tasks that include interpretation, prediction, diagnosis, design, planning, monitoring, debugging, repairing, instruction and control. The expert systems are the offshoots of artificial intelligence which is concerned with using computers to simulate human intelligence in a limited way. Some researchers define artificial intelligence (AI) as the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men. In the last few decades, AI has spread into major subfields including expert systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation and chaos theory. Some researchers do not differentiate between expert systems and knowledge-based systems. The key issue behind all these developments is the knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and knowledge processing