Distributed Expert Systems for C3I

While most distributed expert systems research has focussed on cooperating expert systems (tightly coupled expert systems that work together to solve complex problems), our research indicates that there is an alternative, loosely coupled, approach for C³I systems. The loosely coupled approach focuses on the functional decomposition of AI applications, the usage of databases as communication nodes, and the separation between the MMI and the inference engine. As a result it encourages the development of modular expert systems which can be embedded into C³I applications. This article describes the guidelines we have developed for knowledge based modules in C³I.