Success in tutoring electronic troubleshooting

Two years ago Dr. Sherrie Gott of the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory described an avionics troubleshooting tutor being developed under the Basic Job Skills Research Program. The tutor, known as Sherlock, is directed at teaching the diagnostic procedures necessary to investigate complex test equipment used to maintain F-15 fighter aircraft. Since Dr. Gott's presentation in 1987, the tutor has undergone field testing at two Air Force F-15 flying wings. The results of the field test showed that after an average of 20 hours on the tutor, the 16 airmen in the experimental group (who average 28 months of experience) showed significant performance gains when compared to a control group (having a mean experience level of 37 months) who continued participating in the existing on-the-job training program. Troubleshooting performance of the tutored group approached the level of proficiency of highly experienced airmen (averaging approximately 114 months of experience), and these performance gains were confirmed in delayed testing six months following the intervention. The tutor is currently undergoing a hardware and software conversion form a Xerox Lisp environment to a PC-based environment using an object-oriented programming language. Summarized here are the results of the successful field test. The focus is on: (1) the instructional features that contributed to Sherlock's success; and (2) the implementation of these features in the PC-based version of the avionics troubleshooting tutor

CBR and MBR techniques: review for an application in the emergencies domain

The purpose of this document is to provide an in-depth analysis of current reasoning engine practice and the integration strategies of Case Based Reasoning and Model Based Reasoning that will be used in the design and development of the RIMSAT system. RIMSAT (Remote Intelligent Management Support and Training) is a European Commission funded project designed to: a.. Provide an innovative, 'intelligent', knowledge based solution aimed at improving the quality of critical decisions b.. Enhance the competencies and responsiveness of individuals and organisations involved in highly complex, safety critical incidents - irrespective of their location. In other words, RIMSAT aims to design and implement a decision support system that using Case Base Reasoning as well as Model Base Reasoning technology is applied in the management of emergency situations. This document is part of a deliverable for RIMSAT project, and although it has been done in close contact with the requirements of the project, it provides an overview wide enough for providing a state of the art in integration strategies between CBR and MBR technologies.Postprint (published version

Explainable fault prediction using learning fuzzy cognitive maps

IoT sensors capture different aspects of the environment and generate high throughput data streams. Besides capturing these data streams and reporting the monitoring information, there is significant potential for adopting deep learning to identify valuable insights for predictive preventive maintenance. One specific class of applications involves using Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTMs) to predict faults happening in the near future. However, despite their remarkable performance, LSTMs can be very opaque. This paper deals with this issue by applying Learning Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (LFCMs) for developing simplified auxiliary models that can provide greater transparency. An LSTM model for predicting faults of industrial bearings based on readings from vibration sensors is developed to evaluate the idea. An LFCM is then used to imitate the performance of the baseline LSTM model. Through static and dynamic analyses, we demonstrate that LFCM can highlight (i) which members in a sequence of readings contribute to the prediction result and (ii) which values could be controlled to prevent possible faults. Moreover, we compare LFCM with state-of-the-art methods reported in the literature, including decision trees and SHAP values. The experiments show that LFCM offers some advantages over these methods. Moreover, LFCM, by conducting a what-if analysis, could provide more information about the black-box model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time LFCMs have been used to simplify a deep learning model to offer greater explainability

Establishing knowledge and skill in a novel system-supervisory task: an application to automated mail sorting

This thesis aims to establish methods for identifying and training the knowledge and skills of operating a novel automated system still undergoing final design and construction. The absence of operating experience requires the characteristics of the system to be examined so that the future tasks of supervisors can be anticipated in order to address human factors design. This work is carried out in the context of an 'Integrated Mail Processor' (IMP)—a highly automated letter sorting machine being developed by Royal Mail. [Continues.

The 1990 progress report and future plans

This document describes the progress and plans of the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch (RIA) at ARC in 1990. Activities span a range from basic scientific research to engineering development and to fielded NASA applications, particularly those applications that are enabled by basic research carried out at RIA. Work is conducted in-house and through collaborative partners in academia and industry. Our major focus is on a limited number of research themes with a dual commitment to technical excellence and proven applicability to NASA short, medium, and long-term problems. RIA acts as the Agency's lead organization for research aspects of artificial intelligence, working closely with a second research laboratory at JPL and AI applications groups at all NASA centers

An information assistant system for the prevention of tunnel vision in crisis management

In the crisis management environment, tunnel vision is a set of bias in decision makers’ cognitive process which often leads to incorrect understanding of the real crisis situation, biased perception of information, and improper decisions. The tunnel vision phenomenon is a consequence of both the challenges in the task and the natural limitation in a human being’s cognitive process. An information assistant system is proposed with the purpose of preventing tunnel vision. The system serves as a platform for monitoring the on-going crisis event. All information goes through the system before arrives at the user. The system enhances the data quality, reduces the data quantity and presents the crisis information in a manner that prevents or repairs the user’s cognitive overload. While working with such a system, the users (crisis managers) are expected to be more likely to stay aware of the actual situation, stay open minded to possibilities, and make proper decisions

Computational modelling in disorders of consciousness: Closing the gap towards personalised models for restoring consciousness

Disorders of consciousness are complex conditions characterised by persistent loss of responsiveness due to brain injury. They present diagnostic challenges and limited options for treatment, and highlight the urgent need for a more thorough understanding of how human consciousness arises from coordinated neural activity. The increasing availability of multimodal neuroimaging data has given rise to a wide range of clinically- and scientifically-motivated modelling efforts, seeking to improve data-driven stratification of patients, to identify causal mechanisms for patient pathophysiology and loss of consciousness more broadly, and to develop simulations as a means of testing in silico potential treatment avenues to restore consciousness. As a dedicated Working Group of clinicians and neuroscientists of the international Curing Coma Campaign, here we provide our framework and vision to understand the diverse statistical and generative computational modelling approaches that are being employed in this fast-growing field. We identify the gaps that exist between the current state-of-the-art in statistical and biophysical computational modelling in human neuroscience, and the aspirational goal of a mature field of modelling disorders of consciousness; which might drive improved treatments and outcomes in the clinic. Finally, we make several recommendations for how the field as a whole can work together to address these challenges

Modelling medical diagnostic processes

The thesis investigates the development of medical reasoning processes and how student modelling of such processes can be achieved in intelligent tutoring systems. The domain of orthopaedics was chosen for the research. Literature has shown that medical reasoning has been modelled mainly from an expert point of view. The research problem addressed is to model explicitly various levels of medical expertise in terms of reasoning strategies. The thesis reports on a system, DEMEREST (DEvelopment of MEdical REasoning STrategies), a developmental user model component which describes successive stages of medical reasoning and which could ultimately be part of a medical tutor. The system diagnoses physicians' reasoning strategies, determines the level of expertise and produces a plan corresponding to the application of these strategies. As a basis of doing so, a set of seven reasoning strategies was identified in the medical problem solving literature. These strategies are based on generalisation, specialisation, confirmation, elimination, problem refinement, hypothesis generation and anatomy. An empirical study was carried out to examine the development of these strategies. Protocols of ten physicians at various levels of expertise were collected and analysed. A number of interactions of strategies at different levels of expertise was identified in half of these protocols and this information was used to construct a model of changes of strategies over time. Planning in· artificial intelligence was used as a means of decomposing medical problem solving into a set of goals; the goals being associated with the reasoning strategies. By taking this approach, medical reasoning is viewed as a planning process. The remaining protocols from the empirical study were used to evaluate DEMEREST. The system was tested for its ability to determine a level of expertise for each protocol, model the reasoning strategies applied and their interactions, and generate a plan for each protocol. The assessment of the overall performance of the system showed that it was successful. This assessment also helped to identify conceptual as well as implementation constraints of the prototype system. The main result of the research undertaken in this thesis is that the design of the system DEMEREST demonstrates the feasibility of modelling the development of medical reasoning strategies and its usefulness for student modelling