Fault Diagnosis Through Responsibility

Industry today has a severe problem in the automatic t es t i ng of analog cards. At the A i r Force I n s t i t u t e of Technology, we are developing an Expert System based on the s t ruc ture and funct ion of an analog c i r c u i t card to d r ive automatic tes t equipment. This system uses the informat ion contained in the schematic diagram of the c i r c u i t as we l l as fundamental knowledge of e lec t ron ics and past experience in maintaining the card. One of the most important aspects of t h i s system is i t s a b i l i t y to reason about possible f a u l t s based upon the func t ion of the sub-sections of the c i r c u i t . This task is accomplished using the type of "second p r i n c i p l e s " which an e lec t ron ic engineer would use.