Presidential Young Investigator Award (Computer and Information Science)

该项目涵盖人工智能的两个领域的研究活动：基于知识的专家系统和机器学习。其中一个研究重点是开发一个基于知识的咨询系统，以帮助设计数字VLSI电路。这项研究涉及扩展当前开发基于规则的专家系统的方法，通过将它们应用于设计任务，并通过将基于规则的方法与算法方法相结合来处理设计任务的不同方面。第二个研究领域，机器学习，专注于开发Lex系统，该系统通过生成和解决实践问题来学习问题解决启发式。这项研究导致了一种领域无关的技术(目标导向学习)的发展，用于从例子中进行概括。未来一年关于机器学习的研究将包括尝试将这些技术应用于学习VLSI设计规则的任务。

This project covers research activities in two areas of Artificial Intelligence: knowledge-based expert systems and machine learning. One research thrust focusses on developing a knowledge-based consultant system to aid in the design of digital VLSI circuits. This research involves extending current methods for developing rule-baszed expert systems, by applying them to design tasks, and by integrating rule- based methods with algorithmic methods for dealing with different aspects of the design task. The second research area, machine learning, has focussed on developing the LEX system which learns problem-solving heuristics by generating and solving practice problems. This research has led to development of a domain-independent technique (goal-directed learning) for generalizing from examples. Research on machine learning over the coming year will include an attempt to apply these techniques to the task of learning rules for VLSI design.