US 5,778,157 AGranted

System and method for expert system analysis using quiescent and parallel reasoning and set structured knowledge representation

AssigneeYY Software Corporation

InventorsRobert K. Oatman, Peter J. Herrera, Remy D. Sanouillet, Charles E. Zimmerman

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Abstract

An integrated system and method for providing a flexible expert system development and runtime environment with an integrated natural language processor and set-oriented knowledge base. The system and process include an input device, a spreading activation module, a reasoning module, a decision module, and a knowledge base. The system and method may also include a natural language processing module. The spreading activation module utilizes the knowledge base, which is set-oriented with named relationships between concepts to traverse the knowledge base efficiently. The reasoning module executes related, nested logic statements which manipulate the complex facts in the knowledge base. The decision module selects the value or values from a list which are most relevant at the moment the module is called. The knowledge base represents all data in a nested, set-oriented manner. The system and method, in turn, produce an output in response to the input or command into the system.

Claims5

Dependent claims

An expert system for generating an output representation in response to at least one input, comprising;

a knowledge base that stores a plurality of linguistic and domain specific facts and statements from which are derived a plurality of associated concepts, each fact having at least one possible value;
an input module for receiving a plurality of user inputs:
a spreading activation module, coupled to the knowledge base and the input module to receive each input, and that generates at least one chain of the concepts to relate each input by selectively and iteratively associating each input with a plurality of facts and statements and applying constraints to the concepts associated with facts;
a decision module, coupled to the knowledge base and the input module for determining a value of fact from a plurality of possible values for a fact;
a natural language processing module, coupled to the knowledge base and spreading activation module, for evaluating linguistic statements relative to facts within the knowledge base as the facts have been constrained by the spreading activation module;
a reasoning module, coupled to the knowledge base and the decision module, for automatically executing the statements to update the facts in the knowledge base in response to changes in the value of other facts in the knowledge base;
and
an output module coupled to the spreading activation module to receive the chains of concepts, and coupled to the knowledge base, to select one or more of the chains of concepts related to each input, and to generate an output representation of each input by determining the value for facts associated with the selected chains of concepts.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.