The role of artificial intelligence in computer-aided design of control systems

Contemporary computer-aided design (CAD) programs incorporate excellent functional tools but can be enhanced through Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly expert systems. Expert systems(ES) for design, however, must incorporate "design process models" explicitly. To study the various phases of such a development, a specific expert system has been generated to aid the control engineer in some aspects of control system design. Conventional and AI programming concepts are combined to generate a generic "design associate". Through this development insight evolved regarding concepts, modeling and implementation of general expert systems for design. This paper discusses these aspects as they relate to control system design as well as to the general area of AI expert systems for CAD. The various components of expert system organization including human-machine interfacing, search processing and knowledge representation selections are analyzed with a general ES architecture for CAD control engineering applications provided.