This chapter gives an introduction to expert systems as they have been and are likely to be applied to the domain of process control. The evolutionary context of expert systems is discussed, so as to pick out those features of process control expert systems which make them different from expert systems in other domains and artificial intelligence in general. This chapter on expert systems for process control has taken an evolutionary view of the field, examining how expert systems have evolved from their roots in artificial intelligence to become something quite distinct from the medical expert systems from which they sprang. However, they are not so separate that there is no more to be learnt from the applications in the medical domain. While the experts in process control and medicine may not discuss the intricacies of their knowledge-based systems, the designers and academics remain in communication.

Inspec keywords: medical expert systems; process control; medical control systems

Other keywords: process control expert system; artificial intelligence; knowledge-based system; evolutionary context; medical expert system

Subjects: Biological and medical control systems