liew@ARAMIS.RUTGERS.EDU.UUCP (03/30/87)
There will be a design colloquim on Tuesday March 31st at 10:30 am in
Hill 423. The speaker will be Ramon Acosta of MCC and an abstract of
his talk is given below. A copy of his paper is in JoAnn Gabinelli's
office (Hill 408).
Argo: An Analogical Reasoning System for Solving Design Problems
Michael N. Huhns and Ramon D. Acosta
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
AI/KBS and VLSI CAD Programs
3500 West Balcones Center Drive
Austin, TX 78759
The static and predetermined capabilities of many knowledge-based design
systems prevent them from acquiring design experience for future use.
To overcome this limitation, techniques for reasoning and learning by
analogy that can aid the design process have been developed. These
techniques, along with a nonmonotonic reasoning capability, have been
incorporated into Argo, a tool for building knowledge-based systems.
Closely integrated into Argo's analogical reasoning facilities are
modules for the acquisition, storage, retrieval, evaluation, and
application of previous experience. Problem-solving experience is
acquired in the form of a problem-solving plan represented as a
rule-dependency graph. From this graph, Argo calculates a set of
macrorules, each based on an increasingly abstract version of the plan.
These macrorules are partially ordered according to an abstraction
relation for plans, from which the system can efficiently retrieve the
most specific plan applicable for solving a new problem. The use of
abstraction in a knowledge-based application of Argo allows the system
to solve problems that are not necessarily identical, but just analogous
to those it has solved previously. Experiments with an application for
designing VLSI digital circuits are yielding insights into how design
tools can improve their capabilities and extend their domains of
applicability as they are used.