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A microcomputer-based expert system for the diagnosis of lathe machining operations has
been developed using the EXSYS shell on an IBM AT. Interviews with a journeyman
machinist resulted in an initial knowledge base of rules containing basic concepts and
relationships concerning set-up and control of lathe machining. The system provides the user
with analysis and advice regarding the diagnosis and certain set-up aspects of common lathe
operations, and has shown that it is feasible to elicit and mimic at least a portion of an expert
machinist's knowledge and special skills.
1. Background
Computers are used to operate and organize the operation
of metal-cutting machines. In the case of computer
numerically controlled (CNC) machines, the servomechanisms that control speeds and feeds receive inputs
from a local computer located at the machine tool (Pressman and Williams, 1977). The computer memory stores
numerical control (NC) programs that determine the part
geometry, and machine feeds and speeds. In many factories, machine tools communicate with a central supervisory
computer. In the fully automated factory (one with zero or
low displaceable labor), the central computer may also
control the material-handling system that moves parts from
one machine to the next (Grover, 1980).
Widespread use of CNC machines has left a gap previously occupied by the intelligence of machinists. An
intermediate controller is required to close this gap, Fig. 1.
Such a controller should insure that operation is within the
constraints imposed by the machine, guard against forced
oscillations (chatter) of the tool, and provide for the
sensing and measurement required for automatic tool
replacement. Roughly, these are the intelligent functions
once supplied by the human machinist. A similar view of
the machinist has been described by Wright (1983) and
Wright and Bourne (1988).
Two attempts have been made to fill this gap: first, actual
0953-9875/91 $03.00 +. 129 Chapman& Hall
354
W a r d et al.
Unexpected
mofefiol
variations
INPUT:
De~irea
low cost
high
quolit'/
product
Pad throughput
Tool life
Surface finish
Ch~pmanagement
Energy cor~umption
4. Knowledge acquisition
The task of gathering information, generally, from any
source, is called the knowledge acquisition, while the task
of gathering information from the domain expert is called
the knowledge elicitation (Shadbolt and Burton, 1990).
The main question in knowledge elicitation is how the
knowledge engineer can get the domain experts to tell what
they do. Knowledge acquisition (or elicitation) is the
scientific and engineering problem of formalizing a domain
355
expertise for the first time (Kodratoff et al., 1988). The
methods used to achieve this goal reflect the expert's ability
to explain his/her behavior. Kodratoff et al. (1988) divided
the knowledge elicitation process into three steps:
(1) Obtaining background knowledge through expert
interaction and literature on the domain;
(2) Learning full description of high-level and intermediary-level concepts (concept formation);
(3) Learning diagnostic rules and meta-level knowledge
(rule learning).
According to Buchanan (1982), the knowledge acquisition (or elicitation) is the transfer and transformation of
problem-solving expertise from some knowledge source to
a program, with potential sources of knowledge being
human experts, textbooks, databases, and even one's own
experience. In addition to such knowledge elicitation
techniques as expert interview, verbal protocol analysis
and observational studies (Welbank, 1983), a number of
psychological techniques, including the personal construct
theory (Shaw and Gains, 1984), and the concept of sorting
are being used. Recently, Belkin et al. (1988) have
proposed the discourse analysis method of knowledge
elicitation based on the collection of data consisting of
natural language human-human interactions. Table 1
shows a taxonomy of knowledge acquisition methods
modified from Santamarina and Salvendy (1989).
The main difficulty in knowledge acquisition is that in the
process of human thinking one attempts to understand and
the model is not subject to direct observation. Recently,
Johnson et al. (1988) developed a framework for representing expertise required to perform a given task. This
framework, based upon inferences made from a record of
problem-solving activities consists of the following:
(1) The expert can be viewed as a processor that has the
capability of producing a certain problem-solving behavior
using expertise. The task of knowledge acquisition is to
determine this expertise;
(2) The expert develops a set of actions and abilities that
are necessary to realize this expertise;
(3) Although one cannot observe the expertise directly,
the invocation of the expert's actions and abilities in a
record of problem-solving behavior can be observed;
(4) Since one can observe the invocation of actions and
abilities by the expert, some representation of the expertise
can be developed;
(5) A statement of the expertise required to perform a
task serves as a specification of the requirements for a
computer program that is designed to perform this task.
For example, the methodology for collecting and analyzing the protocol data leading to development of specification of expertise can be based upon identification of
operations, episodes, and data cues which are the basic
categories of behavior in the protocol records (Johnson et
Ward et al.
356
Table 1. Taxonomy of knowledge acquisition tools (Santamarina and Salvendy, 1989).
(I) Problemsolving
(1) Protocol analysis
(2) Retrospective probing
(3) Procedural simulation or Problem analysis (Grover,
1983 and Waterman, 1986)
(4) On-site observation
(5) Forward scenario simulation (Grover, 1983)
(6) Introspective reports
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
al., 1988). Operations are primitive activities of problemsolving that do not depend on a particular context, like
collecting data or making computations. The patterns of
operations that are repeated within and across different
problems in the protocol data are called episodes. Data
cues are operands which comprise the data processed in the
problem-solving operations, and are indicated by domain
nouns.
5. Knowledge representation
Human knowledge can be declarative, i.e. expressing the
state of the world through a set of specific statements, or
procedural, illustrating how to do things (Conway and
Wilson, 1988). The main difference between these two
357
types of knowledge is that procedural knowledge cannot be
as easily described or retrieved as in the case of declarative
knowledge. This difference has a direct bearing on the
knowledge representation schemes for expert systems. For
example, semantic nets and other schemata are used to
represent the easily describable declarative knowledge,
while frameworks and production systems are utilized for
representing the procedural knowledge,
According to Duce and Ringland (1988), the knowledge
representation problem can be described using three main
components. The first one is to find a knowledge
representation language or formal language in which the
knowledge domain can be described. The second component of the knowledge representation problem is the one
that can perform automatic inferences for the user. The
third component is how to develop a knowledge base that
accurately represents the understanding of the domain
area.
The main sub-problems of knowledge representation
were summarized by Duce and Ringland (1988) as follows:
(1) Expressive adequacy: is a particular knowledge
representation scheme sufficiently powerful? What knowledge can and cannot particular schemes represent?
(2) Reasoning efficiency: like all representation problems in computer science, a scheme that represents all
knowledge of interest and is sufficient to allow any fact of
interest to be inferred by no means guarantees that it will be
possible to perform the inference in an acceptable time.
There is generally a trade-off between expressive adequacy
and reasoning efficiency;
(3) Primitives: what are the primitives (if any) in knowledge representation? What primitives should be provided
in a system and at what level?
(4) Meta-representation: how do we structure the knowledge in a knowledge base and how do we represent
knowledge about this structure in the knowledge base?
(5) Incompleteness: what can be left unsaid about a
domain and how do you perform inferencing over incomplete knowledge and revise earlier inferences in the light of
later, more complete, knowledge?
(6) Real world knowledge: how can we deal with attitudes such as beliefs, desires and intentions? How do we
avoid the paradoxes that accompany self-reverential
propositions?
Many psychological studies investigated different knowledge representation schemes used to develop structures
for representing the human experts' knowledge. The forms
of knowledge representation can be described with respect
to their relevance to human information-processing paradigm (Conway and Wilson, 1988). In general, there are
three forms of knowledge representation, i.e. (1) procedural; (2) propositional; and (3) analogical. The procedural
representation focuses on the control of the representation
within the context of some general structure of knowledge.
358
The procedural representation may also combine the
knowledge control and representation into a single form.
The propositional representation uses abstract content
patterns to organize the propositional information (like
schemata and frames). Other propositional representations of concepts may use the semantic nets as representation schemes.
W a r d et al.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Lathe machiningquestion
What are the inputs or problems?
What are the outputs or solutions?
Whichtypes of inputs cause difficultiesfor the expert?
How are the problems characterized?
How are the solutions characterized?
What sort of knowledgeis used?
How are problems or methods broken into smaller units?
359
protocol analysis sessions, it was possible to apply the
concepts and relations developed and construct a set of
rules to place in the shell.
Area
Planning
Diagnosis
Aspect
tool selection
speed selection
feed rate selection
chatter recognition
chatter problem correction
avoidance of excessive tool wear
maintenance of finish and tolerance requirements
avoidance of heating problems
The knowledge base of ITONUS consists of three components: rules, qualifiers, and choices. Rules are the
IF-THEN statements which contain the relationships and
heuristics to be manipulated by the inference mechanism.
Qualifiers are conditions which comprise the IF portion of
the rules, and consist of a statement ending in a verb.
Several values may be assigned to each qualifier corresponding to different states of that qualifier. For example:
Qualifier
Value
the operation is
turning
facing
boring
parting
Choice
use a steady or follow rest
inspect tool
increase speed
chatter is possible
Ward et al.
360
Table 2. The following sample consultation is based on a steelboring operation9 The part is 41 cm long and 10 cm in diameter.
The workpiece is cylindrical, chatter is not present, and chips are
flowing freely. However, the load on the machine is increasing
and the chips are beginning to turn blue. Tolerances are still being
held and the status of tool wear is unknown. The bore diameter is
3.18 cm and the length of the bore is 15 cm. A rough cut is being
taken. Ellipses ( . . . ) indicate that the session has been edited by
deleting values.
Material type is
1 Cast iron
2 Bronze
3 Aluminum
4 Stainless steel
11 Forging
4
Operation is
1 Parting
2 Turning
3 Facing
4 Boring
Table 2--contd.
4
Please input part length
: 16
Please input part diameter
:4
Chatter is
1 Present
2 Not present
3 No machining has been performed yet
2
Workpiece is
1 Square or hexagonal
2 Cylindrical
2
Chips are
1 Flowing freely and consistently
2 Flowing poorly (long, 'stringy', non-uniform)
1
Ampere reading is
1 Increasing
2 Decreasing
1
Tool wear is
1 Present
2 Not present
3 Not known
4 No machining has been performed yet
3
Chip color is
1 Straw
2 Blue coming off the workpiece
3 Same as workpiece
4 Changing from straw to blue
5 No machining has been performed yet
4
Part tolerance is
1 Incorrect
2 Correct
2
Please input bore diameter
: 1.25
Please input bore length
:6
Cut is
1 Finish cut
2 Rough cut
1
2
3
10
9
7
361
Old and new results are displayed together showing
changes in values and recommendations. This facility is
helpful in rule development. Development of the rules
evolved over the course of the interviews. Rules were
progressively modified, added or deleted. During the last
two interviews four test cases (Hall, 1988) were evaluated
and resulted in further modification of the rule base.
System validation (item 3 above) and performance feedback (item 4 above) can be expected to produce further
improvement.
8. Conclusions
ITONUS is an ES for lathe machining that represents a first
step in capturing and eliciting the unique knowledge of an
expert machinist. Basic concepts about planning and
control of lathe operations have been applied in an ES
environment. ITONUS gives practical advice on a limited
number of lathe operation scenarios. A non-expert, having
only a limited knowledge of lathe machining, can receive
suggestions for set-up, operation, and diagnosis of certain
common problems. Obvious limitations are the lack of
robustness of the knowledge base and the fact that only one
expert was consulted. Future work will aim to involve more
experts, especially those familiar with CNC machines;
rules will be developed to deal with specific types of sensor
feed-back and CNC programming concepts; the knowledge base will be expanded to include specific tool
selection, material, and speed/feed relationships for setup; testing will be done in an industrial setting; and further
attention will be given to human perception of heat effects.
Ultimately, the expert machinist as embodied in the expert
system will be used to redesign or replace the rule base and
controller of an FLC machine tool. The ultimate goal of
this research is to develop a metal-cutting process control
that will permit unattended but reliable operation of a
lathe.
Acknowledgements
The initial concepts and planning for the project was done
with support from the National Science Foundation research award R118610671. The actual research was funded
by a grant from the University of Kentucky Center for
Robotics and Manufacturing Systems. Special thanks are
due to journeyman machinist James Hartlage, the domain
expert.
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