Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still seen by some as a controversial area of computer science research. This opinion is reinforced by the perception that AI is about the creation of a model of human intelligence in a computer and the fact that this has not yet been done. In fact, this demonstrably false impression of AI is nowhere further from the truth than in the areas of industry and engineering where AI techniques have become the norm in sectors including computer aided design, intelligent manufacturing, and control.
AI techniques are fast becoming accepted in industry-related areas such as production of technical documentation, planning and scheduling of processes, fuzzy control and analysis (e.g., parameter extraction) of real-time engineering data.
The papers in this volume represent work by both computer scientists and engineers separately and together. They directly and indirectly represent a real collaboration between computer science and engineering, covering a wide variety of fields related to intelligent systems technology ranging from neural networks; knowledge acquisition and representation; automated scheduling; machine learning; multimedia; genetic algorithms; fuzzy logic; robotics; automated reasoning; heuristic searching; automated problem solving; temporal, spatial and model-based reasoning; clustering; blackboard architectures; automated design; pattern recognition and image processing; automated planning; speech recognition; simulated annealing; and intelligent tutoring, as well as various computer applications of intelligent systems including financial analysis, artificial insemination, automated manufacturing, diagnosis, oil discoveries, communications and controls, health delivery, air travel and tourist information processing, and aircraft trajectory planning.