Expert Troubleshooting Technology for Rapidly Diagnosing Failures in Complex Systems

We propose to develop Multi-agent Prognostic Health and Usage Monitoring and Influence Diagrams (MULTI-PHUM-ID) and to integrate it with the solid technique of Bayesian Networks, which combines Dynamic Case-Based Reasoning (DCBR) and Model-Based Reasoning (MBR) with sensor validation. DCBR is powerful when a system or component model is poorly understood and MBR is based on the mathematical model of a system or component. Their combination has shown to be useful in the diagnosis and prognosis of gas turbine engine and will be shown for the engine accessory components. The final result of this project is a Matlab implementation of MULTI-PHUM-ID which can easily be transferred to interested DoD groups involved in research & developments of fault diagnosis and prognosis accessory components. BENEFIT: We expect to develop a small version of MULTI-PHUM-ID for sale to DOD and NASA. Other agencies such as NSF and DOE are interested in our technology. Companies for Security related projects and those in Aerospace will be interested. Several private investors have expressed interests in developing and marketing MULTI-PHUM-ID. Our initial Market research indicates that if we can develop a small commercial version of MULTI-PHUM-ID, we can sell it for $5k each and predicting that we will have 200 customers after Phase 2, we expect to make about $ 1 M in the first year. Other industries such as companies like Sigma Quest can use our technology to assist them in handling the huge amounts of data that they need to manage for the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). Individual investors have expressed interests to support our developments in Phase III. Copies of Ms. Naghibzadeh and Ms. Salari’s interests in MULTI-PHUM-ID are included here. We will offer MULTI-PHUM-ID as a third-party product from the Mathworks Inc., the developers of Matlab. We expect that our chief non-DoD customer will come from aerospace companies. Several private investors have expressed interests in developing and marketing MULTI-PHUM-ID with their letters to Dr. Berenji.