Engineering topics

Krolak, Patrick D.

Publications and source records attributed to Krolak, Patrick D..

5 records

NASA NTRS1993

An artificial reality environment for remote factory control and monitoring

Work has begun on the merger of two well known systems, VEOS (HITLab) and CLIPS (NASA). In the recent past, the University of Massachusetts Lowell developed a parallel version of NASA CLIPS, called P-CLIPS. This modification allows users to create smaller expert systems which are able to communicate with each other to jointly solve problems. With the merger of a VEOS message system, PCLIPS-V can now act as a group of entities working within VEOS. To display the 3D virtual world we have been using a graphics package called HOOPS, from Ithaca Software. The artificial reality environment we have set up contains actors and objects as found in our Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project. The environment allows us to view and control the objects within the virtual world. All communication between the separate CLIPS expert systems is done through VEOS. A graphical renderer generates camera views on X-Windows devices; Head Mounted Devices are not required. This allows more people to make use of this technology. We are experimenting with different types of virtual vehicles to give the user a sense that he or she is actually moving around inside the factory looking ahead through windows and virtual monitors.

Kosta, Charles Paul↗

NASA NTRS1993

Rapid prototyping 3D virtual world interfaces within a virtual factory environment

On-going work into user requirements analysis using CLIPS (NASA/JSC) expert systems as an intelligent event simulator has led to research into three-dimensional (3D) interfaces. Previous work involved CLIPS and two-dimensional (2D) models. Integral to this work was the development of the University of Massachusetts Lowell parallel version of CLIPS, called PCLIPS. This allowed us to create both a Software Bus and a group problem-solving environment for expert systems development. By shifting the PCLIPS paradigm to use the VEOS messaging protocol we have merged VEOS (HlTL/Seattle) and CLIPS into a distributed virtual worlds prototyping environment (VCLIPS). VCLIPS uses the VEOS protocol layer to allow multiple experts to cooperate on a single problem. We have begun to look at the control of a virtual factory. In the virtual factory there are actors and objects as found in our Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project. In this artificial reality architecture there are three VCLIPS entities in action. One entity is responsible for display and user events in the 3D virtual world. Another is responsible for either simulating the virtual factory or communicating with the real factory. The third is a user interface expert. The interface expert maps user input levels, within the current prototype, to control information for the factory. The interface to the virtual factory is based on a camera paradigm. The graphics subsystem generates camera views of the factory on standard X-Window displays. The camera allows for view control and object control. Control or the factory is accomplished by the user reaching into the camera views to perform object interactions. All communication between the separate CLIPS expert systems is done through VEOS.

Kosta, Charles Paul↗

NASA NTRS1991

The Management and Security Expert (MASE)

The Management and Security Expert (MASE) is a distributed expert system that monitors the operating systems and applications of a network. It is capable of gleaning the information provided by the different operating systems in order to optimize hardware and software performance; recognize potential hardware and/or software failure, and either repair the problem before it becomes an emergency, or notify the systems manager of the problem; and monitor applications and known security holes for indications of an intruder or virus. MASE can eradicate much of the guess work of system management.

Miller, Mark D.↗

NASA NTRS1990

PCLIPS

CLIPS is an expert system, created specifically to allow rapid implementation of an expert system. CLIPS is written in C, and thus needs a very small amount of memory to run. Parallel CLIPS (PCLIPS) is an extension to CLIPS which is intended to be used in situations where a group of expert systems are expected to run simultaneously and occasionally communicate with each other on an integrated network. PCLIPS is a coarse-grained data distribution system. Its main goal is to take information in one knowledge base and distribute it to other knowledge bases so that all the executing expert systems are able to use that knowledge to solve their disparate problems.

Krolak, Patrick D.↗

NASA NTRS1990

A neural network simulation package in CLIPS

The intrinsic similarity between the firing of a rule and the firing of a neuron has been captured in this research to provide a neural network development system within an existing production system (CLIPS). A very important by-product of this research has been the emergence of an integrated technique of using rule based systems in conjunction with the neural networks to solve complex problems. The systems provides a tool kit for an integrated use of the two techniques and is also extendible to accommodate other AI techniques like the semantic networks, connectionist networks, and even the petri nets. This integrated technique can be very useful in solving complex AI problems.

Bhatnagar, Himanshu↗