Project Title:

Passive Knowledge Acquisition System

06.05-3370
NAS9-18334
Passive Knowledge Acquisition System
Software Productivity Solutions, Inc.
	122 North Fourth Avenue
	Indialantic, FL 32903     
		Vincent Kovarik
(407-984-3370)

Abstract:

	The development of knowledge-based systems currently requires the use of a knowledge
engineer to translate and encode the knowledge extracted from an expert into the
target representation and reasoning system. Although the goal of providing systems
with which the expert can directly interact has been pursued for some time, current
do not meet it. A major reason is that experts must shift the focus of their cognitive
processing between the performance of the task to be captured and thinking about
how to encode that process. This project will develop a passive knowledge acquisition
system which unobtrusively monitors and records the expert's actions. Then, using
a collection of elicitation and discovery heuristics, the system queries the expert
regarding the rationale and decision process behind the actions. This approach will
provide an expert knowledge elicitation system which behaves much the same as a human
knowledge engineer.

Potential Commercial Application:

Potential Commercial Applications: The results could apply to the insertion of the
technology into NASA programs, to capturing tactical knowledge in the battlefield
for the military, and commercial applications such as medical diagnosis and financial
analysis.