re: AI and Ada

re: AI and Ada

[SAHARBAUGH]

Mike Felman suggests that you look at Louie Baker's book.  I agree,
also get the source code from him.  Here is an excerpt from our
final report on the real-time AI/Ada Processor Project:

Two other expert systems were considered for use: a system from Software
Artistry and a system from Louis Baker [BAKER].  

It was difficult to get consistent information about the Software Artistry
system.  The brochure said it was written in Ada but upon inquiry it
seemed that it would be written in Ada only if someone agreed to purchase
it.  It also was not forward reasoning.  It used a linked-list data
structure and little recursion; however, it did not utilize dynamic memory
management and was judged unsuitable for an embedded real-time system
application.

The system in Louis Baker's book [BAKER] performs both forward and
backward reasoning.  Dr. Baker said that the source code was not up to
modern code quality standards.  We obtained the source code from Dr. Baker
and found it to be as he described it.  The code uses recursion and the
Ada keyword "new" to allocate dynamic memory but it does not use
"unchecked_deallocation" to tell the memory manager when it can reclaim
storage.

There were several reasons for choosing AFES.  AFES performs fuzzy logic
which means it can reason about uncertainty such as "fuel-is-low and
threat-is-high".  AFES was designed to be an embeddable component and
could be easily integrated into the Ada demonstration system.  The AFES
authors were available locally at Florida Institute of Technology and we
were able to influence the Ada code as it was being converted from Pascal.

[BAKER] "Artificial Intelligence with Ada," 1st edition (1989)
Louis Baker, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-003350-1

note: AFES = Ada Fuzzy Expert System

--- hope this helps
sam harbaugh
SAHARBAUGH@ROO.FIT.EDU
Integrated Software, Inc.
1945 Palm Bay Road, #7
Palm Bay, Florida 32905
telephone (407) 984-1986
fax       (407) 951-4291
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