This chapter provides an introduction to case-based reasoning, discusses motivations for CBR, and describes the central steps in the CBR process. It examines the relationship of CBR to other approaches and discusses major research areas, open issues, and promising opportunities for CBR. It surveys and relates numerous approaches within CBR and provides more than 150 references to international CBR research.

Analogical reasoning appears to play a key role in creative design. This article provides a brief overview of recent AI research on analogy-based creative design. It begins with an examination of characterizations of creative design. Then it analyzes theories of analogical design in terms of four questions: why, what, how, and when. Next it briefly describes three recent AI theories of analogy-based creative design: SYN [Borner et al 1996], DSSUA [Qian and Gero 1992], and IDEAL [Bhatta 1995]. Finally it enumerates a set of research issues in analogybased creative design.

. Knowledge-based configuration is both a successful application domain for AI techniques and and an active research area. An open issue in many practical domains is that of reconfiguration, typically exhibited by legacy systems that are to be extended, upgraded or simply altered. Standard configuration techniques are not necessarily suited to this task. We discuss the use of a diagnosis approach to reconfiguration. We present the differing application and representation requirements, develop a representation that is suitable for expressing the information about the required and configurable functionalities from the diagnosis point of view, present an example and discuss our experiences. 1. Introduction The automated configuration of technical systems is a successful application area for knowledge-based techniques. Initially, configuration research followed the mainstream of expert system research with the use of rule-based expert systems for configuration purposes (McD82), and rule-...

We present the current status of a recipe planner for bioprocesses.

Knowledge-based configuration is a successful application domain for AI techniques. An open issue in many practical domains is that of reconfiguration, typically exhibited by legacy systems that are to be extended, upgraded or simply altered. We discuss the use of a diagnosis approach to reconfiguration.

. This paper describes research on the simplification of designs using analogical reasoning. We present a definition of simplification and some examples, and then describe a prototype system that has been built to support our preliminary investigations of this problem. 1.0 Introduction This research is concerned with the representations and reasoning required for Design Simplification. A design can be considered as simpler than another for a variety of reasons, such as shape, use, or ease of assembly, for example. Simplification, as a consequence, can be done with a variety of goals. In addition, simplification can be done in a variety of ways. For example, simplifications might be searched for (i.e., reasoned out) or retrieved (e.g., using CBR). Our preliminary investigations are concerned with doing simplification by Analogy with stored simplifications. The designs are represented as Function, plus Behavior, plus Structure. Structure is represented in terms of attributes, compone...

Creative designers often see solutions to pending design problems in the everyday objects surrounding them. This can often lead to innovation and insight, sometimes revealing new functions and purposes for common design pieces in the process. We are interested in modeling serendipitous recognition of solutions to pending problems in the context of creative mechanical design. This paper characterizes this ability, analyzing observations we have made of it, and placing it in the context of other forms of recognition. We propose a computational model to capture and explore serendipitous recognition which is based on ideas from reconstructive dynamic memory and situation assessment in case-based reasoning. Introduction When creative designers have been deeply engaged in a problem, they are often able to recognize solutions to it in their environment, even if they are not actively working on the problem at the time. The solutions recognized may be objects, behaviors, processes, techniques...

We investigate some aspects of cognition involved in invention, more precisely in the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. We propose the use of the Structure-BehaviorFunction (SBF) language for the representation of invention knowledge; we claim that because SBF has been shown to support a wide range of reasoning about physical devices, it constitutes a plausible account of how an inventor might represent knowledge of an invention. We further propose the use of the ACT-R architecture for the implementation of this model. ACT-R has been shown to very precisely model a wide range of human cognition. We draw upon the architecture for execution of productions and matching of declarative knowledge through spreadingactivation. Thuswe present a model which combines the well-established cognitive validity of ACT-R with the powerful, specialized model-based reasoning methods facilitated by SBF. Introduction The cognition involved in invention may be among the rarest and most d...

Drawings, on the one hand, and teleological models, on the other, are two ways of understanding and communicating design information. Drawing on previous work, Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) theory claims that teleological knowledge is comprised of three basic kinds of knowledge: structural knowledge, behavioral knowledge, and functional knowledge. However, the design task, in practice, revolves around drawings. For example, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software manipulates and produces drawings, and to produce a design is to produce a set of documents that primarily consists of drawings of that design. And yet, drawings can, at best, represent only structural knowledge, and even that incompletely, as components ’ roles in the design are not and cannot be determined solely by the drawing. Two questions motivate this research: (1) what role, precisely, do drawings place in the design process? and (2) how can we enhance CAD tools to make more direct use of teleological

oring systems and provided many ideas for the development of Canah-chab. Dr. Mark Guzdial provided interesting advices on the use of visualization tools to improve the interface of Canah-chab. Drs. Goel, Govindaraj, Recker and Guzdial provided challenging critiques on earlier drafts of this thesis. Their constructive criticisms helped to make explicit the contributions and limitations of this research. They also provided detailed comments that helped to significantly improve the presentation of this thesis. Drs James Foley and John Stasko provided feedback on Canah-chab's interface. The research reported in this thesis has immensely benefited from input by several people as well. Mr. Andr'es G'omez de Silva Garza played an important role in the implementation of Canah-chab. His contributions have been especially significant in the development of the illustrations of the design processes. Mr. Michael Donahoo iv also helped w