The Development of an Automated Residential Expert System (A.R.E.S.)

Program year: 1997/1998Digitized from print original stored in HDRSince the pioneering endeavors of Warren McCullock and Walter Pitts (involving computer learning) in 1943, artificial intelligence has fascinated experts and has aroused the interest of the general public. Currently, computer science researchers are employing this vibrant technology to the following areas: expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks, robotics, vision, natural language, speech recognition, and genetic algorithms. As a society, artificial intelligence has prompted intense philosophical discussions involving logic versus emotion, computer predictability versus human spontaneity, and the characteristics of true intelligence. Our project involves expert systems. Expert systems owe their popularity to the following features: their capacity to "mass produce" knowledge, their reduced cost of information decimation, their ability to work in environments deemed as hazardous to people, their permanence of expertise, their increased reliability (especially when humans would fail due to stress or fatigue), and their capability to explicitly explain every logical step from hypothesis to conclusion. At present, research efforts are working to resolve some of the disadvantages involving expert systems--mostly dealing with a computer's inherent inability to adapt to new situations and to detect incomplete or erroneous data. The overall goal of our research project is to develop A.R.E.S., an expert system that will solve a problem within on-campus residence hall affairs