Traditional Versus Rule-Based Programming Techniques: Application To The Control Of Optional Flight Information

Abstract

SUMMARYTo the software design community, the concern over the costs associated w i t h a program's execution time and implementation is great. desirable, and sometimes imperative, t h a t the proper programming technique i s chosen which minimizes a l l costs for a given application or type of application.I t is always T h i s paper describes a study t h a t compared the cost-related factors associ ated w i t h traditional programming techniques t o rul e-based programming techniques for a specific application. traditional approach regarding execution efficiency, b u t favored the rulebased approach regarding programmer productivity (implementation ease).The results of this study favored the Execution efficiency was measured by the number of steps required t o i s o l a t e hypotheses. or a fetch f o r information from another body of code. The separate homogeneous rule-base and inference mechanisms of the rule-based program required more steps i n the isolation of hypotheses. The best case f o r the rule-based program was approximately four times l e s s e f f i c i e n t than the t r a d i ti onal program.A step was defined t o be a condition test, function c a l l ,The results for programmer productivity were based on the modification ease, verification ease, and the ease of adding explanation capability t o each program. These measures were determined by a qualitative sumnation of the required process for each measure. The separate homogeneous rule-base and inference mechanisms of the rule-based program provided potential for improved programmer productivity. T h i s study was based on a specific application. The application was both complex and frequently modified, and therefore, tested key features of both programming techniques. the results should be widely applicable.Although this study examined a specific application,

Feasibility of using a knowledge-based system concept for in-flight primary-flight-display research

“…Additionally, the ease and efficiency of ify (ref. 4). These problems would worsen with each implementing and maintaining the systems for the change that occurred to the logic in the course of the flight tests confirmed the software engineering advan-research effort.…”

“…given complex logic like that needed for The amount of information already on the pri-the PFD information-management research (ref. 4). mary flight display (PFD) of a commercial "glass cockpit" (see fig.…”

Goal-directed encoding of task knowledge for robotic skill acquisition

“…Admittedly, there exist effective algorithmic and adaptive control techniques that can be applied to the baseline control problem [20][21][22]. However, as the need arises for remotely-piloted vehicles and autonomous drones [23] to possess higher-level flight management skills normally assumed by a human flight crew, the ability of knowledge-based systems to e n d e complex decision making becomes appealing [18, 24,25]. This section demonstrates how RSA2 goals can be used to specify control strategies used in the earliest stage of robotic skill acquisition.…”