Natural‐language processing applied to an ITS interface

The aim of this paper is to show that with a subset of a natural language, simple systems running on PCs can be developed that can nevertheless be an effective tool for interfacing purposes in the building of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). After presenting the special characteristics of the Smalltalk/V language, which provides an appropriate environment for the development of an interface, the overall architecture of the interface module is discussed. We then show how sentences are parsed by the interface, and how interaction takes place with the user. The knowledge‐acquisition phase is subsequently described. Finally, some excerpts from a tutoring session concerned with elementary geometry are discussed, and some of the problems and limitations of the approach are illustrated

An algebraic approximation to the classification with fuzzy attributes

AbstractThis paper proposes an algebraic approximation to the problem of generating appropriate classifications in a universe of discourse in which the characteristics of the elements are defined through attributes whose values are linguistic labels. Classifications are generated by means of operations between ordered strings induced by the fuzzy attributes. Moreover, a heuristic measure is used, based on the concept of statistical variance, in order to recognize the potential relevance of each attribute with respect to the generated classifications

A Distributed Approach for Multiple Model Diagnosis of Physical Systems

In the 1990s Agent-Based Systems (ABS) have acquired the same importance as Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) during the 1980s. Agent technology appeal is due to the benefits that agent-based organization and coordination allow in designing cooperative problem-solving systems. In recent works on distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), researchers have tried to define more precisely the role of an intelligent agent, i.e., of the computational entity that shares the accomplishment of a specific global goal via collaborative schemes. Although important progress has been made in this field, the systematic design of DAI-oriented systems still remains a hard task. In this paper, we attempt to define a general diagnostic engine designed to allow cooperative problem solving within a web of knowledge-based agents. A framework of a cooperative diagnostic engine is proposed, where the diagnosis of physical systems is accomplished in a parallel and distributed universe of intelligent actors. To reach this goal, we formalize an organizational diagnostic knowledge structure which defines different deep models and tasks in order to better distinguish between structure and behavior. Such organization induces different cooperation schemes within the agents in order to improve the diagnostic ability in the distributed processing

Designing complex systems within distributed architectures: an intelligent tutoring systems perspective

The goal of this work is to introduce the basic concepts of distributed artificial intelligence as new methodologies to conceive and realize complex intelligent systems. We focused our attention on the design of intelligent tutoring systems, and using a distributed framework, we reached a fine control on the communicability process, one of the key issues in the realization of intelligent tutoring systems. A prototype is presented as an open information system in which classical modules, such as the domain expertise module and the tutor, are seen as populations of intelligent actors that share their fragmentary knowledge and organize their tasks in a concurrent universe in order to accomplish a common goal, the teaching session. The system has been written in a concurrent object-oriented language, realized on top of the Common Lisp Object System

A complete, flexible fuzzy-based approach to the classification problem

We present an algebraic structure as a complete methodology of classification. Utilizing this structure, we apply an algebraic approximation to the problem of generating appropriate clusters of objects characterized by fuzzy attributes. More precisely, the values of the attributes are expressed in terms of linguistic labels, and thus are handled as fuzzy numbers. This opens new possibilities in all those fields for which the need to describe the population under analysis by means of more natural terms becomes crucial. In fact, in these cases, the application of resolution strategies based on the adoption of “standard” methods, such as a distance matrix, appears as a brutal effort to adapt quantitative methods to qualitative problems

Analytical Version Control Management in a Hypertext System

ABSTRACT may be saved for later reuse of material, but also to In this paper it is shown how structural and cognitive versioning issues can be efficiently managed in a Petri nets based hypertextual model. The advantages of this formalism [st:89] are enhanced by a modular and structured modeling; modularity allows to focus the attention only on some modules, while giving the abstraction of the others. Each module owns metaknowledge that is useful in defining new layers and contexts. The central point of the data model is the formulation and resolution of three recurrence equations, effective in describing both the versioning and the derivation history; these equations permit to express in precise terms both the structural evolution (changes operated on specific nodes of the net) and the behavioral one (changes concerning browsing)