- Expert System for Diesel Electric Locomotive Repair
- Harold E. Johnson Jr. and Piero P. Bonissone
Abstract
In recent years, expert systems have become the most visible and the fastest
growing branch of Artificial Intelligence. General Electric Company's
Corporate Research and Development has applied expert system technology to the
problem of troubleshooting and the repair of diesel electric locomotives in
railroad "running repair shops". The expert system uses production
rules and an inference engine that can diagnose multiple problems with the
locomotive and can suggest repair procedures to maintenance personnel. A
prototype system has been implemented in Forth, running on a Digital Equipment
PDP11/23 under RSX-11M. This system contains approximately 530 rules (roughly
330 rules for the Troubleshooting System, and 200 rules for the Help System),
partially representing the knowledge of a Senior Field Service Engineer. The
inference engine uses a mixed-mode configuration, capable of running in either
the forward or backward mode. The Help System can provide the operator with
assistance by displaying textual information, CAD diagrams or repair sequences
from a video disk. The rules are written in a representation language
consisting of nine predicate functions, eight verbs, and five utility
functions. The first field prototype expect system, designed CATS-1
(Computer-Aided Troubleshooting System - Version 1), was delivered in July 1983
and is currently under field evaluation.
- A State Space Approach to Robotics
- Dan Slater
Abstract /
Errata
As the robot revolution continues, robots are taking on new and unusual
applications. Two new applications discussed in this paper are in the area
of motion picture effects filming and spacecraft antenna pattern measurements.
- Control of a Cartesian Robot
- Judy Franklin, Terri Noyes and Gerry Pocock
Abstract
The work in control applications at the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics has
been directed toward a prototype Cartesian Assembler donated to the laboratory
by General Electric of Schenectady, New York. The machine and some of the
hardware interfaces are described along with low level controlling schemes for
point-to-point position/velocity control. An emulation of single axis
controllers is shown to be an effective control method. Encoder/positional
information is the basis of this low level control structure which will later
be tailored for use with processors devoted to each axis. High level control
issues such as adaptive learning techniques are addressed.
- A Robotic Application for Contamination Free Assembly
- Randy M. Dumse
Abstract
Rockwell's Electro Static Gyro Navigation (ESGN) System is built around a one
gram beryllium ball that functions as a gyro rotor. It is round within four
millionths of an inch and is electrostatically suspended in a cavity with only
two thousandths of an inch clearance between the ball and the walls. The
presence of a detectable impurity during assembly could cause an electrostatic
discharge that would destroy the gyro. Cleaning by conventional methods
typically took 25 hours. This paper discusses the mechanical construction and
Forth programming of a robot arm that reduced the process to a 17 minute cycle.
- Improvement of a Human/Robot Interface Through the Use of Forth
- Doug Thompson
Abstract
International Robomation/Intelligence (IRI) manufactures a computer controlled 5
axis robot arm for industrial use such as machine loading/unloading and parts
transfer. IRI updated its computer operating system from the present
assembly code version to Forth. This paper describes the use of Forth for
man/machine interfaces. User programming is accomplished via IRI's simple and
straight forward on-line Robot Command Language (RCL). Special emphasis will
be placed on how Forth has been adapted to the production environment where the
end user may have little or no programming experience. The approach taken
emphasizes at all times the relationship between human and robot rather than
the physical control of the robot itself.
- Forth and Automation Research at the National Bureau of Standards
- William G. Rippey
Abstract /
Errata
The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) is conducting a large research project in
industrial automation. Automated control of manufacturing processes will be
achieved through extensive use of computers. Some of the individual projects
implemented in Forth will be described. Some Forth techniques used on each
project will be highlighted.
- Dynamic Processing of Analogue Data Using an Apple Computer
- William H. Caskey
Abstract /
Errata
GASCHROMATOGRAPH is a program which supports data acquisition from laboratory
instruments using an Apple-ADALAB system with dynamic calculations of areas under
the peaks for quantitative analysis. Requirements of the system are: Apple II
computer with 48K RAM, monitor, disk drive, printer, and game controller. Analog
to digital conversion of the instrument signal with 13 bit of resolution is
accomplished with an ADALAB interface board. The areas calculated by
GASCHROMATOGRAPH are shown to be essentially identical to those determined by
direct digitization of the area under a peak produced by the tracing on a strip
chart recorder. The integration algorithms of GASCHROMATOGRAPH were designed for
and are applicable to analysis of samples which are resolved completely by the
chromatography system.
- Implementing Datastructures in Forth
- James Basile
Abstract
This paper focuses on the application of Forth's extensibility to implementing
powerful, versatile data structures. Use of CREATE ... DOES>
is briefly explored. Tools are introduced to change the residency of a structure
to disk, map memory, vector generic structures, and control multitasking.
- Message Passing with Queues
- Rosemary C. Leary and Donald P. McClimans
Abstract
General message passing software for intertask communication has been written in
URTH using first-in first-out queues. These queues can be of any length, and
either memory or disk resident. The disk resident queues may be several blocks
long. The width of a queue entry is also arbitrary, and can range from a single
byte to the queue length. This software was successfully used for intertask
communication among the seventeen tasks of the Omega Laser Alignment System.
- Vectoring Arrays of Structures
- Rieks Joosten and Hans Nieuwenhuÿzen
Abstract
Writing a program module requires the specification of the interface between this
and other program modules (or the operating environment). Since modularity implies
that you can replace one module by another, a mechanism is needed to switch the
definitions (datastructuers) that make up the program module interface. In this
paper, a general way of switching the action of a set of Forth datastructures
(which can be thought of as a program module interface) is presented.
- Multiple Code Field Data Types and Prefix Operators
- Klaus Schleisiek
Abstract
This paper presents compilers for creating "intelligent" data types which
have more than just one code field, as words in classical Forth do. These compilers
introduce a prefix syntax into Forth to create a whole class of data structures, the
first of which became known in the Forth community as the `TO' concept in 1979.
- A Portable Forth Random Number Generator
- William T. Doyle
Abstract
A portable high-level Forth random number generator is described. It is based upon
Knuth's FORTRAN function IRN55 and uses the tabular method of Mitchell and Moore.
The Forth word and FORTRAN subroutine yield identical long sequences of random
double numbers.
