- AIAI-PR-50 "Japanese Understanding : Ambiguity And Anaphora";
Shintaro Endo, Seiko Instruments Inc; December 1990; £ 5.50 UK/surface
mail; £ 6.50 airmail Abstract
This work describes an affiliate programme between AIAI and SII (Seiko
Instruments Inc) from January 1990 to December 1990. The work has been
mainly done under guidance of the Programming Systems Group with consultancy
from the Department of AI. The aim of the first part of the work was ambiguity
resolution for a Japanese language front-end to application systems. The
second part extended the work to discourse analysis including
zero anaphora
resolution. Zero anaphora are the source of many ambiguities in Japanese
language understanding. The result of the work was a prototype lexicon
written in PATR-II and its parser written in SICStus Prolog running of
a Sun workstation. They provide the basis for future development work.
- AIAI-PR-49 "An Operating System Model For Dynamic Linking
With A Single Level Store - Model Description In Prolog"; Ken-ichi,
Maeda; December 1990; £ 11.00 UK/surface mail; £ 13.00 airmail
Abstract
Dynamic linking with a single level store is the main element of the
old Multics system. This tie-up is still attractive today because it is
an important function for supporting the quick prototyping capability available
with AI language environments.
I present an OS simulator written in Prolog, which I use to evaluate dynamic
linking with a single level store system. The simulator defines a minimal
hardware description, providing a pseudo-cycle counter.
I discuss dynamic linking speed issues based on the experimental results
from the simulator, SunOS and a number of virtual experiments. I also discuss
several hardware issues concerning the implementation of dynamic linking.
I show that dynamic linking is not so costly as is thought to be if appropriate
hardware support is used. On the contrary, dynamic linking with a single
level store can run faster than the conventional combination of static
linking and I/O functions for accessing data.
- AIAI-PR-48 "Development Of A Systems Diagram Builder Using
The Goldworks II Hybrid Toolkit"; John Foster, AEA Technology; July
1990; £ 2.00 UK/surface mail; £ 3.00 airmail
Abstract
This report describes work undertaken during a ten week study programme
at the AIAI. The objectives of the study programme were:
- To gain experience in AI techniques and the programming paradigms available
for product development.
- To gain experience in the use of an AI toolkit, in this case GoldWorks
II.
- To produce a project-related prototype suitable for further development
at AEA.
The project undertaken forms part of research work into development
of a more efficient methodology for use in the Hazard Identification stages
of process plan design. In particular the study aimed to look at the way
in which information was used by a hazard identification team and how it
might be better represented in order to make subsequent analysis both more
efficient and more productive. This gave rise to the concept of the Systems
Diagram. The time spent at AIAI has been dedicated to the development of
the Systems Diagram Builder, a tool suitable for "building" such
a diagram.
GoldWorks II was chosen as the tool for the project. GoldWorks was found
on the whole to be a good environment in which to work despite the sheer
volume of documentation that a beginner must wade through. The project
is ongoing and there is still a lot of development work to be done. However
the results so far gained with the Systems Diagram Builder are a good pointer
as to the overall project direction and in particular the suitability of
GoldWorks as the development tool. There are several areas to tidy up with
the Systems Diagram Builder prototype but it should not be too long before
it can stand by itself as an aid to HAZOP studies thus providing a genuine
assessment of the methodology. The capability exists at the moment to produce
a good Systems Diagram suitable for performing initial analysis. Enhancements
are required to allow several diagrams to be linked together and also to
save diagrams and parts of diagrams in a library so that they might be
used as templates in other Systems.
- AIAI-PR-47 "Database Fusion"; Susan Hurst, ICL; November
1990; £ 5.00 UK/surface mail; £ 6.00 airmail
Abstract
This report describes a project undertaken as part of a ten week study
programme at AIAI. The objectives of the project work were to investigate
the area of database fusion, and in doing so look at the possibility of
modelling a multidatabase management system (MDBMS) using KEE (Knowledge
Engineering Environment).
Currently within ICL there are many different databases containing valuable
information. Increasingly applications require data from a number of different
databases located throughout the company which may not necessarily have
the same architecture, access mechanisms or method of connection. The solution
as perceived by Advanced Systems Development (ASD) would be to use a distributed
database access mechanism which would provide users with a uniform interface
for accessing data on many different databases. The system would handle
differences between various DBMs, languages and data models allowing databases
to be integrated even when they reside on different nodes of a network.
The project was chosen to enable the author to gain knowledge and understanding
in the area of database fusion, and thus be able to communicate this knowledge
back to the relevant people/areas in ICL. The project was largely an investigative
project as opposed to an implementation oriented project due to the large
scope of the project. An awareness of some of the problem areas was gained
as well as a knowledge of KEE and Lisp.
Due to the limited amount of time available only a small area of the overall
proposed architecture was chosen for implementation. Effort was concentrated
on the development of an architecture for database fusion and the understanding
of principles and problems within that area. Implementation was restricted
to the generation of an SQL query from a global query language (KEE's TellAndAsk
was used for this purpose) using models built in KEE. The work completed
during the study period concentrated on a very small section of database
fusion. Thus there are many possible areas which could be further investigated
and developed.
- AIAI-PR-46 "Ship-To-Line Supplier Evaluation"; Peter
Lee, ICL; January, 1990; £ 1.50 UK/surface mail; £ 2.50 airmail
Abstract This report gives an assessment of the project undertaken
at the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute at Edinburgh University,
as part of a 12 week study period secondment from ICL Manufacturing, Kidsgrove.
The content area chosen was `ship-to-line' decision making, following a
directive from ICL, of exploring AI techniques with an aspect of just-in-time
inventory control philosophy. The ship-to-line process involves receiving
suppliers' goods and progressing them straight into production, potentially
bypassing the costly test inspection and storage procedures. The problem
now is how can the customer be confident that the supplier delivers and
on time. The project uses AI techniques and tools to assess a supplier's
credibility for ship-to-line goods. The project resulted in a working system,
conforming to initial requirements. These requirements were set in light
of the project time allowed and my limited knowledge of AI paradigms, KEE
and LISP.
- AIAI-PR-45 "Ship-To-Line Supplier Evaluation"; Shaun
Connolly, ICL; January, 1990; £ 1.50 UK/surface mail; £ 2.50
airmail
Abstract
The project is to build a ship-to-line analysis system that will evaluate
a supplier's performance in delivering a product to ICL. If there is sufficient
confidence in the supplier, the product can be shipped directly to the
manufacturing line.
The process of shipping components directly from the supplier to the manufacturing
line is an important facet of the JIT (just-in-time) philosophy. The ability
to ship components to line eradicates the need for any inventory other
than current work in progress. In order for this to take place there must
be confident in the supplier and product. Much time is spent of the analysis
of supplier and product data before a decision is reached as to whether
a particular combination of product and supplier is acceptable for ship-to-line.
A system was developed using KEE. This was a useful exercise giving experience
of using an expert system development tool and of implementing AI programming
techniques.
- AIAI-PR-44 "Simulation Of A Factory Environment Incorporating
Automatic Guided Vehicles"; James Whitham, ICL; January 1990; £
2.00 UK/surface mail; £ 3.00 airmail
Abstract
This report presents the work covered in a six week project performed
as part of the ten week study period in Knowledge Based Systems at the
Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute in Edinburgh, whilst on
secondment from ICL, Ashton. The subject chosen was the simulation of a
factory environment incorporating Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGV's), using
an Object Oriented approach to build a realistic model which would then
be assessed for performance.
Further work was to involve the analysis of constraints in the system,
to see if different configurations could provide a more efficient system.
The major findings of the work were that the tools and techniques used
were suitable for the problem, but that six weeks was insufficient time
to allow for the amount of work to have been performed that the project
needed. The final result of the work was a system which realistically modelled
the fundamental operation of the environment around which it was based
and which would provide a good basis for any future work attempted in this
area.