REASONING BY COORDINATION - AN INTEGRATION OF CASE-BASED AND RULE-BASED REASONING SYSTEMS

A case-based reasoning system (CBRS) is appropriate for an experience- rich domain, while a rule-based system performs reasonably well in a k nowledge-rich application environment. A CBRS mainly uses past experie nces as problem-solving tools, and therefore its capability can be lim ited when previous experiences are not a good representation of the wh ole population. On the other hand, a rule-based reasoning system needs a well constructed domain theory as its reasoning basis, and it does not make use of the knowledge embedded in past experiences. In the pap er, a multiagent cooperative reasoning system (MCRS), which integrates an inductive-reasoning agent (case-based reasoning system) and a dedu ctive-reasoning agent (rule-based reasoning system), is proposed to so lve problems through the cooperation of both agents. The architecture and the inference mechanism of an MCRS are discussed in this paper. A personnel-evaluation support system, based on the proposed MCRS archit ecture and implemented in PROLOG, is presented to demonstrate the feas ibility of using the MCRS to solve problems in a knowledge-poor and ex perience-poor domain.