The role of artificial intelligence in nondestructive testing and evaluation

The paper defines artificial intelligence (Al) and identifies two primary areas in Al, namely Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), that are of immediate relevance to Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E). The drawbacks of present-day Al programmes are presented. A suitable architecture, an effective uncertainty management and learning methodologies are proposed to overcome these limitations, in order to develop versatile and useful KBS for NDT&E