Modern Trends in the Workplace
Expert Systems, Robotics, and Virtual
Reality
Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of study that explores
how computers can be used for tasks that require the human characteristics
of intelligence, imagination, and intuition.
AI Subsets of Interest
- Problem solving covers a broad spectrum, from playing games
to planning military strategy.
- Natural languages are the study of the person / computer
interface in unconstrained English language.
- Fuzzy logic is a type of AI that allows machines
to "think" more along the lines of humans, providing a method of precisely
measuring vague concepts.
- Expert systems present the computer as an expert on some
particular topic.
- Robotics is the study of endowing computer-controlled machines
with vision, speech, and touch.
How Computers Learn
- A knowledge base is a set of facts and rules about those
facts.
- An inference engine accesses, selects, and interprets a set
of rules.
- The inference engine applies the rules to the facts to make
up new facts.
Neural Networks
- Neural networks are computers with chips designed to mimic
the human brain.
- Instead of following the usual step-by-step series of instructions, neural
net computers form a grid, much like a nerve cell in the
brain.
- The grid is used to recognize patterns.
Natural Languages
- A natural language is the language people use on a daily
basis to write and speak (e.g. English).
- Understanding natural languages is a skill thought to require
intelligence.
- A key function of the AI study of natural languages is to develop a computer
system that can resolve ambiguities.
Expert Systems
- An expert system is a software package used with an extensive
set of organized data that presents the computer as an expert on a particular
topic.
- The facts and rules used by an expert system originally come from a human
expert.
Robotics
- A robot is a computer-controlled device that can physically
manipulate its surroundings.
- The most common industrial robots today are mechanical devices with five
or six axes of motion.
- Field robots are remotely controlled to handle dangerous tasks.
Virtual Reality
- Virtual reality involves immersing a user in a computer-created environment
so that the user physically interacts with that environment.
- Often involves headsets and gloves to sense the user's movement and display
the virtual world.
- Through the VRML standard, many web sites are providing
VR interfaces.