Troubleshooting complex systems--An expert system, interactive video, transportable PC solution

Troubleshooting complex control systems presents special problems for the maintenance technician. Because problems occur infrequently, maintenance or repair work may be requested many months after the technician received training for a particular system. An expert system with an object-oriented programming environment for authoring was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to address this problem. The need to transport the delivery system to a variety of locations necessitated the integration of a transportable, 386-based system with color display. Using Smalltalk/V286, this system combined an inference engine with a windowed environment for development of rules and tutorials and display of documentation. In addition, still-frame video with graphic overlays are used.