1 Artificial Intelligence Chapter 6 Applications of AI

Unit 6: Applications of AI

Expert Systems
- An Expert system is a set of program that manipulates encoded knowledge to solve problem
in a specialized domain that normally requires human expertise.
- A computer system that simulates the decision- making process of a human expert in a specific
domain.
- An expert system’s knowledge is obtained from expert sources and coded in a form suitable
for the system to use in its inference or reasoning processes. The expert knowledge must be
obtained from specialists or other sources of expertise, such as texts, journals, articles and data
bases.
- An expert system is an “intelligent” program that solves problems in a narrow problem area
by using high-quality, specific knowledge rather than an algorithm.

Block Diagram
- There is currently no such thing as “standard” expert system. Because a variety of techniques
are used to create expert systems, they differ as widely as the programmers who develop them
and the problems they are designed to solve.
- However, the principal components of most expert systems are knowledge base, an inference
engine, and a user interface, as illustrated in the figure.

Fig: Block Diagram of expert system

1. Knowledge Base

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- The component of an expert system that contains the system’s knowledge is called its
knowledge base. This element of the system is so critical to the way most expert systems are
constructed that they are also popularly known as knowledge-based systems.
- A knowledge base contains both declarative knowledge (facts about objects, events and
situations) and procedural knowledge (information about courses of action).
- Depending on the form of knowledge representation chosen, the two types of knowledge may
be separate or integrated. Although many knowledge representation techniques have been used
in expert systems, the most prevalent form of knowledge representation currently used in
expert systems is the rule-based production system approach.
- To improve the performance of an expert system, we should supply the system with some
knowledge about the knowledge it possess, or in other words, meta-knowledge.

2. Inference Engine

- Simply having access to a great deal of knowledge does not make you an expert; you also must
know how and when to apply the appropriate knowledge.
- Similarly, just having a knowledge base does not make an expert system intelligent. The
system must have another component that directs the implementation of the knowledge.
- That element of the system is known variously as the control structure, the rule interpreter, or
the inference engine.
- The inference engine decides which heuristic search techniques are used to determine how the
rules in the knowledge base are to be applied to the problem.
- In effect, an inference engine “runs” an expert system, determining which rules are to be
invoked, accessing the appropriate rules in the knowledge base, executing the rules , and
determining when an acceptable solution has been found.

3. User Interface

- The component of an expert system that communicates with the user is known as the user
interface.
- The communication performed by a user interface is bidirectional. At the simplest level, we
must be able to describe our problem to the expert system, and the system must be able to
respond with its recommendations.
- We may want to ask the system to explain its “reasoning”, or the system may request additional
information about the problem from us.

Beside these three components, there is a Working Memory - a data structure which stores
information about a specific run. It holds current facts and knowledge.

Stages of Expert System Development

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- Although great strides have been made in expediting the process of developing an expert
system, it often remains an extremely time consuming task. It may be possible for one or two
people to develop a small expert system in a few months; however the development of a
sophisticated system may require a team of several people working together for more than a
year.
- An expert system typically is developed and refined over a period of several years. We can
divide the process of expert system development into five distinct stages. In practice, it may
not be possible to break down the expert system development cycle precisely. However, an
examination of these five stages may serve to provide us with some insight into the ways in
which expert systems are developed.

Fig: Different phases of expert system development

Identification:

Beside we can begin to develop an expert system, it is important that we describe, with as much
precision as possible, the problem that the system is intended to solve. It is not enough simply to
feel that the system would be helpful in certain situation; we must determine the exact nature of
the problem and state the precise goals that indicate exactly how we expect the expert system to
contribute to the solution.

Conceptualization:

Once we have formally identified the problem that an expert system is to solve, the next stage
involves analyzing the problem further to ensure that its specifics, as well as it generalities, are
understood. In the conceptualization stage the knowledge engineer frequently creates a diagram of
the problem to depict graphically the relationships between the objects and processes in the
problem domain. It is often helpful at this stage to divide the problem into a series of sub-problems
and to diagram both the relationships among the pieces of each sub-problem and the relationships
among the various sub-problems.

Formalization:

In the preceding stages, no effort has been made to relate the domain problem to the artificial
intelligence technology that may solve it. During the identification and the conceptualization
stages, the focus is entirely on understanding the problem. Now, during the formalization stage,

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the problem is connected to its proposed solution, an expert system, by analyzing the relationships
depicted in the conceptualization stage.

During formalization, it is important that the knowledge engineer be familiar with the following:

 The various techniques of knowledge representation and heuristic search used in expert
systems.
 The expert system “tools” that can greatly expedite the development process. And
 Other expert systems that may solve similar problems and thus may be adequate to the
problem at hand.

Implementation:

During the implementation stage, the formalized concepts are programmed onto the computer that
has been chosen for system development, using the predetermined techniques and tools to
implement a “first pass” prototype of the expert system.

Theoretically, if the methods of the previous stage have been followed with diligence and care, the
implementation of the prototype should be as much an art as it is a science, because following all
rules does not guarantee that the system will work the first time it is implemented. Many scientists
actually consider the first prototype to be a “throw-away’ system, useful for evaluating progress
but hardly a usable expert system.

Testing:

Testing provides opportunities to identify the weakness in the structure and implementation of the
system and to make the appropriate corrections. Depending on the types of problems encountered,
the testing procedure may indicate that the system was

Features of an expert system:

What are the features of a good expert system? Although each expert system has its own particular
characteristics, there are several features common to many systems. The following list from Rule-
Based Expert Systems suggests seven criteria that are important prerequisites for the acceptance
of an expert system.

1. “The program should be useful.” An expert system should be developed to meet a specific
need, one for which it is recognized that assistance is needed.
2. “The program should be usable.” An expert system should be designed so that even a
novice computer user finds it easy to use .
3. “The program should be educational when appropriate.” An expert system may be used by
non-experts, who should be able to increase their own expertise by using the system.

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4. “The program should be able to explain its advice.” An expert system should be able to
explain the “reasoning” process that led it to its conclusions, to allow us to decide whether
to accept the system’s recommendations.
5. “The program should be able to respond to simple questions.” Because people with
different levels of knowledge may use the system, an expert system should be able to
answer questions about points that may not be clear to all users.
6. “The program should be able to learn new knowledge.” Not only should an expert system
be able to respond to our questions, it also should be able to ask questions to gain additional
information.
7. “The program’s knowledge should be easily modified.” It is important that we should be
able to revise the knowledge base of an expert system easily to correct errors or add new
information.

Natural Language Processing

Perception and communication are essential components of intelligent behavior. They provide the
ability to effectively interact with our environment. Humans perceive and communicate through
their five basic senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and their ability to generate
meaningful utterances. Developing programs that understand a natural language is a difficult
problem. Natural languages are large. They contain infinity of different sentences. No matter how
many sentences a person has heard or seen, new ones can always be produced. Also, there is much
ambiguity in a natural language. Many words have several meanings and sentences can have
different meanings in different contexts. This makes the creation of programs that understand a
natural language, one of the most challenging tasks in AI.

Developing programs to understand natural language is important in AI because a natural form of

communication with systems is essential for user acceptance. AI programs must be able to
communicate with their human counterparts in a natural way, and natural language is one of the
most important mediums for that purpose. So, Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the field that
deals with the computer processing of natural languages, mainly evolved by people working in the
field of Artificial Intelligence.

Natural Language Processing (NLP), is the attempt to extract the fuller meaning representation
from the free text. Natural language processing is a technology which involves converting spoken
or written human language into a form which can be processed by computers, and vice versa. Some
of the better-known applications of NLP include:

 Voice recognition software which translates speech into input for word processors or
other applications;

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 Text-to-speech synthesizers which read text aloud for users such as the hearing- impaired;
 Grammar and style checkers which analyze text in an attempt to highlight errors of
grammar or usage;
 Machine translation systems which automatically render a document such as a web
page in another language.

Natural Language Generation

"Natural Language Generation (NLG), also referred to as text generation, is a subfield of natural
language processing (NLP; which includes computational linguistics)

Natural Language Generation (NLG) is the natural language processing task of generating natural
language from a machine representation system such as a knowledge base or a logical form.

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In a sense, one can say that an NLG system is like a translator that converts a computer based
representation into a natural language representation. However, the methods to produce the final
language are very different from those of a compiler due to the inherent expressivity of natural
languages.

NLG may be viewed as the opposite of natural language understanding. The difference can be put
this way: whereas in natural language understanding the system needs to disambiguate the input
sentence to produce the machine representation language, in NLG the system needs to make
decisions about how to put a concept into words.

The different types of generation techniques can be classified into four main categories:

 Canned text systems constitute the simplest approach for single-sentence and multi-
sentence text generation. They are trivial to create, but very inflexible.
 Template systems, the next level of sophistication, rely on the application of pre- defined
templates or schemas and are able to support flexible alterations. The template approach is
used mainly for multi-sentence generation, particularly in applications whose texts are
fairly regular in structure.
 Phrase-based systems employ what can be seen as generalized templates. In such systems,
a phrasal pattern is first selected to match the top level of the input, and then each part of
the pattern is recursively expanded into a more specific phrasal pattern that matches some
subportion of the input. At the sentence level, the phrases resemble phrase structure
grammar rules and at the discourse level they play the role of text plans.
 Feature-based systems, which are as yet restricted to single-sentence generation, represent
each possible minimal alternative of expression by a single feature. Accordingly, each
sentence is specified by a unique set of features. In this framework, generation consists in
the incremental collection of features appropriate for each portion of the input. Feature
collection itself can either be based on unification or on the traversal of a feature selection
network. The expressive power of the approach is very high since any distinction in
language can be added to the system as a feature. Sophisticated feature-based generators,
however, require very complex input and make it difficult to maintain feature
interrelationships and control feature selection.

Many natural language generation systems follow a hybrid approach by combining components
that utilize different techniques.

Natural Language Understanding:

Developing programs that understand a natural language is a difficult problem. Natural languages
are large. They contain infinity of different sentences. No matter how many sentences a person has
heard or seen, new ones can always be produced. Also, there is much ambiguity in a natural

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language. Many words have several meaning such as can, bear, fly, bank etc, and sentences have
different meanings in different contexts.

Example: - A can of juice. I can do it.

This makes the creation of programs that understand a natural language, one of the most
challenging tasks in AI. Understanding the language is not only the transmission of words. It also
requires inference about the speakers’ goal, knowledge as well as the context of the interaction.
We say a program understand natural language if it behaves by taking the correct or acceptable
action in response to the input. A word functions in a sentence as a part of speech. Parts of the
speech for the English language are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions,
conjunctions and interjections. Three major issues involved in understanding language.

 A large amount of human knowledge is assumed.

 Language is pattern based, phonemes are components of the words and words make
phrases and sentences. Phonemes, words and sentences order are not random.
 Language acts are the product of agents (human or machine).

Levels of knowledge used in Language Understanding

A language understanding knowledge must have considerable knowledge about the structures of
the language including what the words are and how they combine into phrases and sentences. It
must also know the meanings of the words and how they contribute to the meanings of the sentence
and to the context within which they are being used. The component forms of knowledge needed
for an understanding of natural languages are sometimes classified according to the following
levels.

 Phonological
o Relates sound to the words we recognize. A phoneme is the smallest unit of the sound.
Phones are aggregated to the words.
 Morphological
o This is lexical knowledge which relates to the word construction from basic units called
morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. Eg:- friend + ly = friendly
 Syntactic
o This knowledge relates to how words are put together or structure red together to form
grammatically correct sentences in the language.
 Semantic
o This knowledge is concerned with the meanings of words and phrases and how they
combine to form sentence meaning.
 Pragmatic

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o This is high – level knowledge which relates to the use of sentences in different contexts
and how the context affects the meaning of the sentence.
 World
o Includes the knowledge of the physical world, the world of human social interaction, and
the roles of goals and intentions in communication.

Basic Parsing Techniques

Before the meaning of a sentence can be determined, the meanings of its constituent parts must be
established. This requires knowledge of the structure of the sentence, the meaning of the individual
words and how the words modify each other. The process of determining the syntactical structure
of a sentence is known as parsing. Parsing is the process of analyzing a sentence by taking it apart
word – by – word and determining its structure from its constituent parts and sub parts. The
structure of a sentence can be represented with a syntactic tree. When given an input string, the
lexical parts or terms (root words), must first be identified by type and then the role they play in a
sentence must be determined. These parts can be combined successively into larger units until a
complete tree has been computed.

To determine the meaning of a word, a parser must have access to a lexicon. When the parser
selects the word from the input stream, it locates the world in the lexicon and obtains the word’s
possible functions and features, including the semantic information.

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Figure: - Parsing an input to create an output structure

Lexeme (Lexicon) & word forms:

The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most important one in
morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog and dogs are "the same word", is
called a lexeme. The second sense is called word form. We thus say that dog and dogs are different
forms of the same lexeme. Dog and dog catcher, on the other hand, are different lexemes, as they
refer to two different kinds of entities. The form of a word that is chosen conventionally to
represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma, or citation form.

A lexicon defines the words of a language that a system knows about. This is includes common
words and words that are specific to the domain of the application. Entries include meanings for
each word and its syntactic and morphological behavior.

Morphology:
Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words (words as units
in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology). While words are generally accepted as being
(with clitics) the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can
be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog,
dogs, and dog catcher are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations from their
tacit knowledge of the rules of word formation in English. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs
as cat is to cats; similarly, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher (in one sense). The rules
understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed
from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the
branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages, and
attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.

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Morphological analysis is the process of recognizing the suffixes and prefixes that have been
attached to a word.

We do this by having a table of affixes and trying to match the input as: prefixes +root + suffixes.

o For example: adjective + ly -> adverb. E.g.: [Friend + ly]=friendly

o We may not get a unique result.
o “-s, -es” can be either a plural noun or a 3ps verb
o “-d, -ed” can be either a past tense or a perfect participle

Morphological Information:

 Transform part of speech

o green, greenness (adjective, noun)
o walk, walker (verb, noun)
 Change features of nouns
o boat, boats (singular, plural)
 Bill slept , Bill’s bed
o (subjective case, possessive case)
 Change features of verbs
o Aspect
 I walk. I am walking. (present, progressive)
o Tense
 I walked. I will walk. I had been walking. (past, future, past progressive)
o Number and person
 I walk. They walk. (first person singular, third person plural)

Syntactic Analysis:
Syntactic analysis takes an input sentence and produces a representation of its grammatical
structure. A grammar describes the valid parts of speech of a language and how to combine them
into phrases. The grammar of English is nearly context free.

A computer grammar specifies which sentences are in a language and their parse trees. A parse
tree is a hierarchical structure that shows how the grammar applies to the input. Each level of the
tree corresponds to the application of one grammar rule.

It is the starting point for working out the meaning of the whole sentence. Consider the following
two sentences.

1. “The dog ate the bone.”

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2. “The bone was eaten by the dog.”

Understanding the structure (via the syntax rules) of the sentences help us work out that it’s the
bone that gets eaten and not the dog. Syntactic analysis determines possible grouping of words in
a sentence. In other cases there may be many possible groupings of words. Consider the sentence
“John saw Mary with a telescope”. Two different readings based on the groupings.

1. John saw (Mary with a telescope).

2. John (saw Mary with a telescope).

A sentence is syntactically ambiguous if there are two or more possible groupings. Syntactic
analysis helps determining the meaning of a sentence by working out possible word structure.
Rules of syntax are specified by writing a grammar for the language. A parser will check if a
sentence is correct according to the grammar. It returns a representation (parse tree) of the
sentence’s structure. A grammar specifies allowable sentence structures in terms of basic
categories such as noun and verbs. A given grammar, however, is unlikely to cover all possible
grammatical sentences. Parsing sentences is to help determining their meanings, not just to check
that they are correct. Suppose we want a grammar that recognizes sentences like the following.

John ate the biscuit.

The lion ate the zebra.

The lion kissed John

But reject incorrect sentences such as Ate John biscuit the.

Zebra the lion the ate.

Biscuit lion kissed.

A simple grammar that deals with this is given below

sentence --> noun_phase, verb phrase.

noun_phrase --> proper_noun.

noun_phrase --> determiner, noun.

verb_phrase --> verb, noun_phrase.

proper_noun --> [mary].

proper_noun --> [john].

noun --> [zebra].

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noun --> [biscuit].

verb --> [ate].

verb --> [kissed].

determiner --> [the]

Incorrect sentences like “biscuit lion kissed” will be excluded by the grammar.

Semantic Analysis:
Semantic analysis is a process of converting the syntactic representations into a meaning
representation.

This involves the following tasks:

 Word sense determination

 Sentence level analysis
 Knowledge representation

Word sense

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Words have different meanings in different contexts. Mary had a bat in her office.

 bat = `a baseball thing’

 bat = `a flying mammal’

Sentence level analysis

Once the words are understood, the sentence must be assigned some meaning I saw an astronomer
with a telescope.

Knowledge Representation

Understanding language requires lots of knowledge.

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Parameters in Natural Language Processing:

 Auditory Inputs
 Segmentation
 Syntax Structure
 Semantic Structure
 Pragmatic Analysis

Auditory Inputs:

Three of our five senses – sight, hearing and touch – are used as major inputs. These are usually
referred to as the visual, auditory and tactile inputs respectively. They are sometimes called input
channels; however, as previously mentioned, the term "channel" is used in various ways, so I will
avoid it.

In the fashion of video devices, audio devices are used to either capture or create sound. In some
cases, an audio output device can be used as an input device, in order to capture produced sound.

 Microphone
 MIDI keyboard or other digital musical instrument

Segmentation:

Text segmentation is the process of dividing written text into meaningful units, such as words,
sentences, or topics. The term applies both to mental processes used by humans when reading text,
and to artificial processes implemented in computers, which are the subject of natural language
processing. The problem is non-trivial, because while some written languages have explicit word
boundary markers, such as the word spaces of written English and the distinctive initial, medial
and final letter shapes of Arabic, such signals are sometimes ambiguous and not present in all
written languages.

Word segmentation is the problem of dividing a string of written language into its component
words. In English and many other languages using some form of the Latin alphabet, the space is a
good approximation of a word delimiter. (Some examples where the space character alone may
not be sufficient include contractions like can't for can not.)

However the equivalent to this character is not found in all written scripts, and without it word
segmentation is a difficult problem. Languages which do not have a trivial word segmentation
process include Chinese, Japanese, where sentences but not words are delimited, and Thai, where
phrases and sentences but not words are delimited.

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In some writing systems however, such as the Ge'ez script used for Amharic and Tigrinya among
other languages, words are explicitly delimited (at least historically) with a non- whitespace
character.

Word splitting is the process of parsing concatenated text (i.e. text that contains no spaces or other
word separators) to infer where word breaks exist.

Sentence segmentation is the problem of dividing a string of written language into its component
sentences. In English and some other languages, using punctuation, particularly the full stop
character is a reasonable approximation. However, even in English this problem is not trivial due
to the use of the full stop character for abbreviations, which may or may not also terminate a
sentence. For example Mr. is not its own sentence in "Mr. Smith went to the shops in Jones Street."
When processing plain text, tables of abbreviations that contain periods can help prevent incorrect
assignment of sentence boundaries. As with word segmentation, not all written languages contain
punctuation characters which are useful for approximating sentence boundaries.

Other segmentation problems: Processes may be required to segment text into segments besides
words, including morphemes (a task usually called morphological analysis), paragraphs, topics or
discourse turns.

A document may contain multiple topics, and the task of computerized text segmentation may be
to discover these topics automatically and segment the text accordingly. The topic boundaries may
be apparent from section titles and paragraphs. In other cases one needs to use techniques similar
to those used in document classification. Many different approaches have been tried.

Syntax Structure:

Same concept as in the syntactic analysis above

Semantic Structure:

Same concept as in the semantic analysis above

Pragmatic Analysis:

This is high level knowledge which relates to the use of sentences in different contexts and how
the context affects the meaning of the sentences. It is the study of the ways in which language is
used and its effect on the listener. Pragmatic comprises aspects of meaning that depend upon the
context or upon facts about real world.

Pragmatics – Handling Pronouns

Handling pronouns such as “he”, “she” and “it” is not always straight forward. Let us see the
following paragraph.

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“John buys a new telescope. He sees Mary in the distance. He gets out his telescope. He looks at
her through it”.

Here, “her” refers to Mary who was not mentioned at all in the previous sentences. John’s telescope
was referred to as “a new telescope”, “his telescope” and “it”.

Let us see one more example

“When is the next flight to Sydney?” “Does it have any seat left?”

Here, “it”, refers to a particular flight to Sydney, not Sydney itself.

Pragmatics – Ambiguity in Language

A sentence may have more than one structure such as

“I saw an astronomer with a telescope.”

This English sentence has a prepositional phrase “with a telescope” which may be attached with
either with verb to make phrase “saw something with telescope” or to object noun phrase to make
phrase “a astronomer with a telescope”. If we do first, then it can be interpreted as “I saw an
astronomer who is having a telescope”, and if we do second, it can be interpreted as “Using a
telescope I saw an astronomer”.

Now, to remove such ambiguity, one possible idea is that we have to consider the context. If the
knowledge base (KB) can prove that whether the telescope is with astronomer or not, then the
problem is solved.

Next approach is that; let us consider the real scenario where the human beings communicate. If
A says the same sentence “I saw an astronomer with a telescope.” To B, then in practical, it is
more probable that, B (listener) realizes that “A has seen astronomer who is having a telescope”.
It is because, normally, the word “telescope” belongs to “astronomer”, so it is obvious that B
realizes so.

If A has says that “I saw a lady with a telescope.” In this case, B realizes that “A has seen the lady
using a telescope”, because the word “telescope” has not any practical relationship with “lady”
like “astronomer”.

So, we may be able to remove such ambiguity, by defining a data structure, which can efficiently
handle such scenario. This idea may not 100% correct but seemed more probable.

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Machine Vision
Machine vision (MV) is the application of computer vision to industry and manufacturing.
Whereas computer vision is the general discipline of making computers see (understand what is
perceived visually), machine vision, being an engineering discipline, is interested in digital
input/output devices and computer networks to control other manufacturing equipment such as
robotic arms and equipment to eject defective products.

Machine vision is the ability of a computer to "see." A machine-vision system employs one or
more video cameras, analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), and digital signal processing (DSP). The
resulting data goes to a computer or robot controller. Machine vision is similar in complexity to
voice recognition. The machine vision systems use video cameras, robots or other devices, and
computers to visually analyze an operation or activity. Typical uses include automated inspection,
optical character recognition and other non-contact applications.

Two important specifications in any vision system are the sensitivity and the resolution. Sensitivity
is the ability of a machine to see in dim light, or to detect weak impulses at invisible wavelengths.
Resolution is the extent to which a machine can differentiate between objects. In general, the better
the resolution, the more confined the field of vision. Sensitivity and resolution are interdependent.
All other factors held constant, increasing the sensitivity reduces the resolution, and improving the
resolution reduces the sensitivity.

One of the most common applications of Machine Vision is the inspection of manufactured goods
such as semiconductor chips, automobiles, food and pharmaceuticals. Just as human inspectors
working on assembly lines visually inspect parts to judge the quality of workmanship, so machine
vision systems use digital cameras, smart cameras and image processing software to perform
similar inspections.

Machine vision systems have two primary hardware elements: the camera, which serves as the
eyes of the system, and a computer video analyzer. The recent rapid acceleration in the
development of machine vision for industrial applications can be attributed to research in the areas
of computer technologies. The first step in vision analysis is the conversion of analog pixel
intensity data into digital format for processing. Next, an appropriate computer algorithm is
employed to understand the image data and provide appropriate analysis or action.

Machine vision encompasses computer science, optics, mechanical engineering, and industrial
automation. Unlike computer vision which is mainly focused on machine-based image processing,
machine vision integrates image capture systems with digital input/output devices and computer
networks to control manufacturing equipment such as robotic arms. Manufacturers favor machine
vision systems for visual inspections that require high-speed, high-magnification, 24-hour
operation, and/or repeatability of measurements.

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A typical machine vision system will consist of most of the following components:

 One or more digital or analogue cameras (black-and-white or colour) with suitable optics
for acquiring images, such as lenses to focus the desired field of view onto the image sensor
and suitable, often very specialized, light sources
 Input/Output hardware (e.g. digital I/O) or communication links (e.g. network connection
or RS-232) to report results
 A synchronizing sensor for part detection (often an optical or magnetic sensor) to trigger
image acquisition and processing and some form of actuators to sort, route or reject
defective parts
 A program to process images and detect relevant features.

The aim of a machine vision inspection system is typically to check the compliance of a test piece
with certain requirements, such as prescribed dimensions, serial numbers, presence of components,
etc. The complete task can frequently be subdivided into independent stages, each checking a
specific criterion. These individual checks typically run according to the following model:

1. Image Capture
2. Image Preprocessing
3. Definition of one or more (manual) regions of interest
4. Segmentation of the objects
5. Computation of object features
6. Decision as to the correctness of the segmented objects

Naturally, capturing an image, possible several for moving processes, is a pre-requisite for
analyzing a scene. In many cases these images are not suited for immediate examination and
require pre-processing to change certain sizing specific structures etc. In most cases it is at least
approximately known which image areas to be have analyzed, i.e. the location of a mark to be read
or a component to be verified. These are called Regions of Interest (ROIs) (sometimes Area of
Interest or AOIs). Of course, such a region can also comprise the entire image if required.

Machine vision is used in various industrial and medical applications. Examples include:

 Electronic component analysis

 Signature identification
 Optical character recognition
 Handwriting recognition
 Object recognition
 Pattern recognition
 Materials inspection
 Currency inspection

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20 Artificial Intelligence Chapter 6 Applications of AI

 Medical image analysis

Computer Vision:
Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see, where see in this case means
that the machine is able to extract information from an image that is necessary to solve some task.
As a scientific discipline, computer vision is concerned with the theory behind artificial systems
that extract information from images. The image data can take many forms, such as video
sequences, views from multiple cameras, or multi-dimensional data from a medical scanner.

As a technological discipline, computer vision seeks to apply its theories and models to the
construction of computer vision systems. Examples of applications of computer vision include
systems for:

 Controlling processes (e.g., an industrial robot or an autonomous vehicle).

 Detecting events (e.g., for visual surveillance or people counting).
 Organizing information (e.g., for indexing databases of images and image sequences).
 Modeling objects or environments (e.g., industrial inspection, medical image analysis or
topographical modeling).
 Interaction (e.g., as the input to a device for computer-human interaction).

Computer vision is closely related to the study of biological vision. The field of biological vision
studies and models the physiological processes behind visual perception in humans and other
animals. Computer vision, on the other hand, studies and describes the processes implemented in
software and hardware behind artificial vision systems. Interdisciplinary exchange between
biological and computer vision has proven fruitful for both fields.

Computer vision is, in some ways, the inverse of computer graphics. While computer graphics
produces image data from 3D models, computer vision often produces 3D models from image
data. There is also a trend towards a combination of the two disciplines, e.g., as explored in
augmented reality.

Sub-domains of computer vision include scene reconstruction, event detection, video tracking,
object recognition, learning, indexing, motion estimation, and image restoration.

Robotics
Robotics is the interdisciplinary field of study that deals with the design, construction, operation,
and application of robots. Robots are machines that can sense their environment, interpret the

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21 Artificial Intelligence Chapter 6 Applications of AI

information, and take actions in response. They can be used in a wide variety of applications,
including manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and even space exploration.

There are many different types of robots, each with its own unique capabilities. Some robots are
very simple, such as those used in automated manufacturing lines. Others are much more complex,
such as the robots used in surgery or deep-sea exploration.

Robot Hardware
Robots, like any living organism, need to sense their environment and interact with it to perform
tasks. This ability comes from two key components: sensors and effectors.

Sensors:

These are the eyes, ears, and touch receptors of a robot, gathering information about the
surrounding world. They can be broadly classified into two types:

 Passive sensors: These don't emit any energy themselves, but rather passively detect what's
already present in the environment. Examples include:
o Cameras: Capture visual data in the form of images or videos.
o LiDAR: Uses lasers to measure distances and create 3D maps of the environment.
o Microphones: Detect sounds and can be used for speech recognition or
environmental awareness.
o Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs): Measure a robot's orientation and
acceleration.
 Active sensors: These emit their own energy, like sound waves or light, and measure the
reflections to gather information. Examples include:
o Sonar: Uses sound waves to navigate and detect objects underwater or in low-light
conditions.
o Radar: Uses radio waves to detect objects at long distances.

Effectors:

These are the muscles and limbs of a robot, allowing it to move and interact with its environment.
They can also be divided into two main categories:

 Locomotion effectors: These are responsible for robot movement, including:

o Wheels: Used for wheeled robots like rovers or autonomous vehicles.
o Legs: Provide more flexibility and agility for robots that need to walk or climb.
o Tracks: Useful for robots that need to traverse rough terrain.
 Manipulation effectors: These are used for grasping, manipulating, and interacting with
objects, including:

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22 Artificial Intelligence Chapter 6 Applications of AI

o Grippers: Can be robotic hands or specialized tools for picking up and handling
objects.
o Arms: Provide reach and flexibility for manipulation tasks.

Robotic Perceptions
Robot perception is the process of interpreting sensory data to understand the surrounding
environment. This is a crucial step for robots to perform tasks effectively and safely. It involves
several key tasks:

 Localization: Knowing where the robot is in its environment.

 Mapping: Building a representation of the environment.
 Object recognition: Identifying and classifying objects in the environment.
 Obstacle avoidance: Detecting and avoiding obstacles in the robot's path.
 Navigation: Planning and executing a path to reach a desired goal.

Assignment #6
1. Describe the components of expert system. (5) [TU 2080]
2. Why pragmatic analysis is necessary in NLP? How pragmatic analysis is done? (5) [TU
2080]
3. Define Expert System with example. What are stages of expert system development?
Explain. (10) [TU 2079]
4. How syntactic and semantic analyses are performed in natural language processing? (5)
[TU 2079]
5. What is expert system? How its works? Mention role of inference engine in expert system.
(5) [TU 2078]
6. How semantic and pragmatic analysis is done in natural language processing. (5) [TU
2078]
7. How the concept of machine vision are used in Robotics to configure sensors of Robots?
(5) [TU 2076]
8. How syntactic and semantic analysis is done during natural language processing? Explain
with example. (5) [TU 2076]

Prepared By: Ramesh Kumar Chaudhary