CPE/CSC 481-W09 Knowledge-Based Systems Syllabus

General Information

• Course Description [from the Cal Poly Catalog 2005-07]
• 
  "In-depth treatment of knowledge representation, utilization and acquisition in a programming environment. Emphasis on the use of domain-specific knowledge to obtain expert performance in programs."
  
  Prerequisites: CSC 480 (Artificial Intelligence)
  
• Goals and Objectives
  The goal of the course is to understand important problems, challenges, concepts and techniques from the field of Knowledge-Based Systems. In order to achieve this, students learn how to analyse, design, and implement programs and systems of varying complexities. The core aspect of these systems is their ability to deal with knowledge in various forms. This includes the acquisition of knowledge from human experts, other knowledge repositories, or via learning techniques from raw data such as delivered by sensors or data bases. Knowledge also has to be stored in an internal format that is suitable for computer-based storage and processing, while still being accessible to human inspection. Then knowledge needs to be processed, where one important activity is the generation of new knowledge from existing pieces. Based on the new and existing knowledge, decisions must be made for the system, or agents involved with or served by it, to perform some actions. For many systems, an explanation or verification of their suggestions in a format understandable by developers, domain experts or regular users can be important.

Textbooks

The following textbooks will be used in this course. There is a column in the course schedule which indicates the chapters in the books that correspond to a topic discussed in class. Students are expected to read the respective chapters before the topic is covered in class.

• J. Giarratano and G. Riley, `` Expert Systems -- Principles and Programming, 4th Edition,Thomson/PWS Publishing Company, 2004.

For further reading, here are some more textbook suggestions:

• Ernest Friedman-Hill, "Jess in Action" Manning Publications, 2003. [This is the reference book for Jess, a CLIPS-compatible, rule-based programming environment in Java.]
• A. Gonzalez and D. Dankel, ``The Engineering of Knowledge-Based Systems''; Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 2004.
• Introduction to Expert Systems. by Peter Jackson.
  Addison Wesley Longman, 1999. ISBN 0-201-87686-8.
• C. Nikolopoulos, "Expert Systems" Marcel Dekker Inc. 1997. ISBN 0 8247 9927 5.
• the CPE/CSC 480 textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.) by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig.
  Prentice Hall, 2003. ISBN 0-13-790395-2. (The first edition of this book is also sufficient.

Peter Jackson, the author of one of these text books, also put together a list of text books on the topic; it is at http://members.aol.com/jacksonpe/music1/esbooks.htm.

A very nice overview of the literature is at the Web site of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/ExpertSystems. It contains links to many online articles and resources on knowledge-based systems.

CLIPS and Jess

For some assignments, lab exercises, and the term project, we will use the CLIPS or Jess expert system shells. CLIPS is a shell developed at NASA, and has been in use for quite a while. Jess was inspired by CLIPS, and uses the same rule format and inference mechanism, but it is implemented in and integrated with Java. Both are available for download via the Web, and are installed on the lab systems. Jess is subject to some licensing restrictions, and you may have to use a limited evaluation version if you want to install it on your own system. Some textbooks also contain chapters on CLIPS, e.g. Gonzalez & Dankel,or Giarratano & Riley. Ernest Friedman-Hill, the developer of Jess, is the author of "Jess in Action," with an introduction to Jess and a number of examples. CLIPS and related material is available for download from the Web sites below (some of links unfortunately have become obsolete).

• CLIPS Home Page (http://www.siliconvalleyone.com/clips.htm) CLIPS on Sourceforge (http://clipsrules.sourceforge.net()
• CLIPS Tutorial (http://iweb.tntech.edu/bhuguenard/ds6530/ClipsTutorial/tableOfContents.htm) developed by Peter Robinson at the University of Hull in Great Britain

The Jess Home Page contains a lot of material, and also links to related documents.

• Jess Home Page (http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess/)
• There have been several Jess tutorials available online, but their URLs don't seem to be stable. If the links below don't work, try a Google search to find a different source, or an archived copy. Jess Tutorial, Trinity College, CSCI 3344 - Artificial Intelligence, Spring 2008, (Prof. Yu Zhang) (http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~yzhang/teaching/spring2009/CSCI3344/projects/instruction/JESSTutorial.htm)
• Jess Tutorial
• Jess Tutorial (http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01rk/Teaching/CIS341/Labs/Lab2.html) very brief intro to Jess

The Institute for Information Technology of the National Research Council Canada developed Fuzyy Logic extensions for CLIPS and Jess.

• FuzzyCLIPS Home Page (http://www.iit.nrc.ca/IR_public/fuzzy/fuzzyClips/fuzzyCLIPSIndex.html)
• FuzzyJ Home Page (http://www.iit.nrc.ca/IR_public/fuzzy/fuzzyJToolkit.html)

Grading Policy

Modified on Jan. 21 to reflect the decision for a term paper instead of midterm and final exams.

The table gives an overview of the calculation of the grades. I reserve the right, however, to change the formula used. Please note that the project consists of several parts which will be evaluated separately. The project will also be done in teams, and the performance of the team as a whole will be graded unless there is a clear disparity in the contribution of the individual team members. Should this be the case, I may ask for additional documentation like work sheets, email messages, or draft copies of documentation to evaluate individual contributions.