Object Oriented Concurrent Fault Diagnostic System for 8051 Based Microcontroller System

The paper discusses a diagnostic intelligent system based on object oriented paradigm. The aim of this research work is to investigate the object rule integration model and construct an object oriented system that incorporates logic rules in such a way that the user can able to update the rules without changing the method functions of the object model. The system uses knowledge representation structures based on declarative knowledge which is most suitable for fault diagnosis process. The knowledge acquisition process is automated so that the domain expert can easily encode their knowledge by themselves. The diagnostic knowledge is distributed in three categories such as, fault classification, knowledge related to causes of the fault and check knowledge. First the fault is classified and then causes for a fault are identified just like human expert does. The check knowledge is used to match the observed symptoms with related types of the knowledge objects in the knowledge base. The main objective of the diagnostic system is to carry out the fault diagnosis process more intelligently and in flexible order with minimum time. The user interface is developed using visual programming aspects which shows graphically the diagnostic process carried out. The user interface permits the user to enter symptoms as and when required by the system or it will fetch online status of the control signals form the unit under test. The present system is very much suitable for fault diagnosis in microcontroller based systems and can also be used for fault diagnosis in embedded systems or related systems by updating the knowledge base appropriately.