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Overview

Objectives

The current situation in manufacturing, transportation, and other sectors in industry, make an efficient and reliable fault diagnosis system, and associated tools for the maintenance of the diagnosis systems, imperative. Without efficient tools, to maintain these diagnostic systems up-to-date, safety and efficiency of initial fault diagnosis systems cannot be guaranteed over a longer period of time. This is no longer simply a matter of good engineering for sheer economic reasons, but is of direct legal significance given that computer-based fault diagnosis systems are increasingly being placed in control of life-critical situations.

The reality is that system developers still yet have to see good and reliable fault diagnosis system development tools which can match up to the current situation. Artificial Intelligence techniques, such as rule-, model- or case-based reasoning, and automatic induction techniques, only solve part of the problem. In the way these techniques have been applied, hard real-time requirements cannot be guaranteed, they cannot be applied for large problems or they cannot be maintained easily and uniquely. It is therefore felt that, despite the extensive work which has been undertaken over the last decades, the time is now right to develop alternative strategies.

The market potential for such a product cannot be underestimated. The significance of real-time diagnosis systems is increasingly understood and the economic and safety aspects play a major role in highly competitive European and world markets. Through the development of user-friendly, affordable, reliable and consistent fault diagnosis system development tools, engineers and operators of technical systems can be supported more efficiently to develop and operate consistent, complete diagnosis systems. This will ultimately lead to more efficient operation.

The general goal for the project is to:

Decrease life-cycle costs and increase the overall safety and performance of large industrial technical systems by ensuring more consistent and more efficient fault diagnosis.

To achieve this goal, a generic tool encapsulating a new approach to fault diagnosis has to be developed further from the current prototype and expertise within the universities and industrial partners. The developments aim at integration of case-based reasoning, induction, network indexing structures, and real-time expert systems. The current status of the prototype tool is such that commercialisation of the finally developed tool can be expected immediately after the end of the new two-year project. This project proposes therefore to address the very specific market needs for large industrial fault diagnosis applications with a software tool, enabling:

faster and guaranteed response times of on-line diagnostic systems,
simplified and unambiguous exchange of technical knowledge and operational experience,
simplified problem declaration for large technical applications, and
simplified maintenance of all related diagnosis systems.

Diagnosis of Large Technical Applications
Target Market

The BRIDGE Product