High Performance Knowledge Bases: four approaches to knowledge acquisition, representation and reasoning for workaround planning

As part of the DARPA-sponsored High Performance Knowledge Bases program, fo ur organisations were set the challenge of solving a selection of knowledge -based planning problems in a particular domain, and then modifying their s ystems quickly to solve further problems in the same domain. The aim of the exercise was to test the claim that, with the latest Al technology, large knowledge bases can be built quickly and efficiently. The domain chosen was 'workarounds'; that is, planning how a convoy of military vehicles can 'wo rk around' (i.e. circumvent or overcome) obstacles in their path, such as b lown bridges or minefields. This paper describes the four approaches that were applied to solve this pr oblem. These approaches differed in their approach to knowledge acquisition , in their ontology, and in their reasoning. All four approaches are descri bed and compared against each other. The paper concludes by reporting the r esults of an evaluation that was carried out by the HPKB program to determi ne the capability of each of these approaches. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevi er Science Ltd.