Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues

Book excerpt: This book is a collection of some of the papers that were presented during a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues" that was held in Kusadasi, Turkey during August 24- 28, 1992. Attendance at this workshop was mainly by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community. Many of the participants were internationally recognized leaders in the topic of the workshop. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together a highly distinguished group of people with the express purpose of debating where the issues of safety, reliability and maintainability place direct and tangible constraints on the development of intelligent systems. As a consequence, one of the major debating points in the ARW was the definition of intelligence, intelligent behaviour and their relation to complex dynamic systems. Two major conclusions evolved from the ARW are: 1. A continued need exists to develop formal, theoretical frameworks for the architecture of such systems, together with a reflection on the concept of intelligence. 2. There is a need to focus greater attention to the role that the human play in controlling intelligent systems. The workshop began by considering the typical features of an intelligent system. The complexity associated with multi-resolutional architectures was then discussed, leading to the identification of a necessity for the use of a combinatorial synthesis/approach. This was followed by a session on human interface issues.