Functional Reasoning for Fault Diagnosis Expert Systems
Robert Milne · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1985
Industry today has a severe problem in the automatic testing of analog cards. At the Air Force Institute of Technology, we are developing an Expert System based on the structure and function of an analog circuit card to drive automatic test equipment. This system uses, the information contained in the schematic diagram of the circuit as well as fundamental knowledge of electronics and past experience in maintaining the card. One of the most important aspects of this system is its ability to reason about possible faults based upon the function of the subsections of the circuit. This task is accomplished using the type of "second principles" which an electronic engineer would use. It generates which tests the test equipment will conduct and, based upon the results of these test, determine the best test to perform next. In this paper, the basic reasoning mechanism for these systems is discussed.