Development of Advanced Expert System Tools and Expert System Prototype for the U.S. Shipbuilding Industry

The objective of this proposal is to automate a large amount of the technical labor required to create advanced expert systems, and create an advanced expert system prototype for shipbuilding design and engineering. This project builds upon previous knowledge gained by Integration Partners, Inc. in the manual implementation of these systems for a broad range of complex problems. Present techniques for creating advanced expert systems, require significant technical labor, and while the finished systems produce outstanding results, their development schedules are 12 to 36 months in length, thus discouraging the use of advanced expert systems in the shipbuilding industry. Phase 1 will:(i) identify a feasible portion of ship machinery space design as a target domain for an advanced expert system prototype;(ii) research feasibility and develop specifications for a toolkit to automate the creation of advanced expert systems (prototype and production system levels);(iii) identify criteria to measure acceptance of advanced expert systems by the shipbuilding industry;(iv) quantify potential benefits to shipbuilders for using advanced expert systems; and (v) develop an implementation plan for Phase II activities to build a proof of concept toolkit and a prototype of an advanced expert system for the selected domain area.