A TANDEM ARCHITECTURE FOR COOPERATING KNOWLEDGE-BASED CONCURRENT ENGINEERING SYSTEMS

This paper proposes a tandem architecture for cooperating heterogeneous expert systems. Two levels of meta and working expert systems are involved. The working-level expert systems (W-ES), which may be implemented in their own computational environments and in private proof languages, are mainly for application computations. The meta-level expert systems (M-ES), using a common argument language, are mainly responsible for cooperation. The prototype AGENTS system is described for constructing M-ES. Interaction among W-ES has been transformed into two forms: communication and between M-ES through ordinary AGENTS messages and communication between M-ES and the corresponding W-ES using the Deductive Inference Language (DIL). DIL predicates are provided for defining DIL: messages, actuators and converters for interpreting DIL queries and instantiation variables. By this approach, stand-alone capability of individual systems is retained at the working-level and cooperation is achieved effectively with minimum embellishment at the meta-level.