The traditional reliability design methods are imperfect because the designed systems aim at fewer faults, but once a fault happens, the systems might hard fail. To solve this problem, we present a self-maintenance machine (SMM), one that can maintain its functions flexibly even though faults occur. To achieve the capabilities of diagnosing and repair planning, a model-based approach that uses qualitative physics was proposed. Regarding the repair-executing capability, control-type repair strategy was followed. A prototype of the SMM was developed, and it succeeded in maintaining its functions if the structure did not change. However, the prototype revealed the following problems when its reasoning system was used with a commercial product as embedded software: (1) poor performance of the reasoning system, (2) system size that was too large, (3) low adaptability to environmental changes, and (4) roughness of qualitative repair operations. To solve these problems, we proposed new reasoning method based on virtual cases and fuzzy qualitative values. This methodology is one of knowledge compilation, which gives better reasoning performance and can deal with real-world applications such as the SMM. By using this method, we finally developed a commercial photocopier that has self-maintainability and is more robust against faults. The commercial version has been supplied worldwide as a product of Mita Industrial Co., Ltd., since April 1994.

A Review of Qualitative Reasoning: Modeling and Simulation with Incomplete Knowledge

The Eighth International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems (QR '94) was held on 7-10 June 1994 in Nara, Japan. Fifty-three people participated, and 34 papers were presented in either oral or poster sessions. The papers either addressed core issues of qualitative reasoning or extended the field along three axes: (1) cognitive modeling, (2) mathematical sophistication, and (3) application. Mita's self-maintenance copier and IBM's mechanism design and analysis using configuration spaces were demonstrated, convincing the participants of the promising role of qualitative-reasoning techniques in engineering and manufacturing domains.

The new qualitative values that represent using currents and voltages.

Systems (QR '94) was held on 7-10 June A hot issue in cognitive modeling We received 53 submissions and is spatial and diagrammatic reasoning. The core issues of qualitative reasoning Hari Narayanan and his colleagues The eighth workshop was in Nara, included qualitative and (Advanced Research Laboratory, Japan, celebrating the community's causal modeling of the world, automated Hitachi Ltd.) exploited an architecture escape from a simple flip-flop behavior modeling, and qualitative of qualitative visual reasoning and its voyage to a more complex simulation. Interestingly, this transition attracted the attention of many participants. In fact, constructing a component-based sophistication to base qualitative several demonstrations, including model for the input-document handler reasoning on a firm ground. University) presented activity analysis, model abstraction that makes test Iwasaki and Farquhar and will be demonstrating how qualitative generation feasible for continuous held in Monterey, California.

The Seventh International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems was held on 16-19 May 1993. The bulk of the 50 attendees work in the AI area, but several engineers and cognitive psychologists also attended. The two topics attracting special attention were automated modeling and the design task. This article briefly describes some of the presentations and discussions held during the workshop.

The Seventh International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems was held on 16-19 May 1993. The bulk of the 50 attendees work in the AI area, but several engineers and cognitive psychologists also attended. The two topics attracting special attention were automated modeling and the design task. This article briefly describes some of the presentations and discussions held during the workshop.

My dissertation describes an approach to automatically formulating or selecting models of a target physical system for a given qualitative reasoning task. It was motivated by two observations regarding modeling in general and work in qualitative physics in particular. First, all model-based reasoning is only as good as the model used (Davis and Hamscher 1988). Second, no single model is adequate or appropriate for a wide range of tasks (Weld 1989).

The name of a or selecting models of a target physical embodied in a model is defined as a target system provides access to a system for a given qualitative reasoning position taken in each of the possible description of the system topology of task. It was motivated by two dimensions. Perspective taking as a the target circuit--a network of circuit observations regarding modeling in process is defined as formulating or components and their connections general and work in qualitative selecting a scenario model of a target by nodes. This information is physics in particular.

I have presented a qualitative approach to the problem of recovering object structure from motion information and discussed some of its computational, psychophysical and implementational aspects. The computation of qualitative shape, as represented by the sign of the Gaussian curvature, can be performed by a field of simple operators, in parallel over the entire image. The performance of a qualitative shape detection module, implemented by an artificial neural network, appears to be similar to the performance of human subjects in an identical task.