Popis: |
With the giant leaps that technology has taken in the past few years, some professions are still largely artistic. A good example of this is the profession of design. Designers produce products that are efficient, attractive, practical, but not safe. This is because most Universities around the world fail to include safety and health issues into their curriculum. To overcome that flaw, a rule-based tool was designed to assist designers in pointing out the unsafe conditions in their designs. This tool, that utilizes expert systems technologies, took five years to reach its current version. The tool is called TEXPERT. The latest version of TEXPERT underwent a number of changes and continued growth. This year's efforts resulted in the selection of a focus area and investigations into the selection of two technologies (demolition and decontamination- D&D) by which to validate the program. Validation and expansion of the rule-base continued with an emphasis on those components necessary for D&D. Research in object-oriented prototypes, determination of report-format and approach, and development of an initial visual project builder interface were also accomplished. Latest accomplishments included the development of new components, two-way interactions, and the implementation of a maintainable component database that the user interface can use to build the current library that will be available in the menu system. |