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Full Project – Design and implementation of an expert system for car maintenance and troubleshooting

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CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In March 2014 the multinational corporation consisted of 338,875 employees worldwide and, as of November 2014, is the eleventh-largest company in the world by revenue. According to Flynn et al (2012), Toyota was the largest automobile manufacturer in 2012 (by production) ahead of the Volkswagen Group and General Motors. In July of that year, the company reported the production of its 200-millionth vehicle. Toyota is the world’s first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year. It did so in 2012 according to OICA, and in 2013 according to company data. As of July 2014, Toyota was the largest listed company in Japan by market capitalization (worth more than twice as much as #2-ranked SoftBank) and by revenue (Jacob and Vinod 2006).

Computer-based methods are increasingly used to improve the quality of automobile services. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage on behaviors that humans consider intelligent. The ability to create intelligent machines has intrigued humans since ancient times and today with the advent of the computer and 50 years of research into AI programming techniques, the dream of smart machines is becoming a reality. Researchers are creating systems which can mimic human thought, understand speech, beat the best human chess player, and countless other feats never before possible. Dependence on the human expert can be minimized if his/her expertise can be transferred into a computer system. The proposed system for dealing with the problem of faults in automobiles is an expert system.

This computer expert system is designed to provide guidelines on how to handle car problems. Though it might not give a complete guide as a human expert, namely mechanics, the system is designed to at least render temporary assistance to car users as a result of time and distance limitation.

1.2 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

In present times, most households own at least a car. This shows that a car is a necessity in people’s lives as it completes the cycle of living. With the aid of a car, movement from one place to another has been made easy especially for those who are always mobile in their jobs. Cars simplify our lives and make time to be more valuable as we save more time using the car. But at the same time, people who own cars definitely don’t want to have a problem with their cars as the troubleshooting of a car can be a nightmare to them, especially women.

An expert system is a software system that attempts to reproduce the performance of one or more human experts, most commonly in a specific problem domain, and is a traditional application and/or subfield of artificial intelligence. A wide variety of methods can be used to simulate the performance of the expert however common to most or all are:

1) The creation of a so-called “knowledge base” which uses some knowledge representation formalism to capture the Subject Matter Experts (SME) knowledge.

2) A process of gathering knowledge from the SME and codifying it according to the formalism, which is called knowledge engineering. Expert systems may or not have learning components but a third common element is that once the system is developed it is proven by being placed in the same real-world problem-solving situation as the human SME, typically as an aid to human workers or a supplement to some information system.

Two illustrations of actual expert systems can give an idea of how they work. In one real-world case at a chemical refinery, a senior employee was about to retire and the company was concerned that the loss of his expertise in managing a fractionating tower would severely impact operations of the plant. A knowledge engineer was assigned to produce an expert system reproducing his expertise saving the company the loss of the valued knowledge asset. Similarly, a system called Mycin was developed from the expertise of best diagnosticians of bacterial infections whose performance was found to be as good as or better than the average clinician. An early commercial success and illustration of another typical application (a task generally considered overly complex for a human) was an expert system fielded by DEC in the 1980s to quality check the configurations of their computers prior to delivery. The eighties were the time of greatest popularity of expert systems and interest lagged after the onset of the AI Winter.

In like manner, developing one of such system to represent the repository of the knowledge of a mechanic is as essential as any other expert system. To this end, this project, Expert System for automobile fault detection with the index is a necessity.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In dealing with problems of automobiles and troubleshooting, both mechanics and car users face a lot of challenges especially in the area of fault detection and proper diagnosis. This often leads to car developing more faults or exposing car users to untold difficulties. Analyses show that some of the problems encountered in car diagnosis and repair by both mechanics and car users include but not limited to:

Non availability diagnostic support for mechanics especially in developing countries and rural areas.
The current manual system of diagnosis often leads to cars developing more problems when mechanics diagnose wrongly.
Most times the distance to mechanic workshop possess challenges and more causes damages as car users don’t know how to diagnose and fix little problems.
The current system of diagnosis is too slow and more expensive.

1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objective of the study is to develop an expert system on car maintenance and troubleshooting that is capable of assisting Toyota car users in dealing with their common car faults whenever the time is limited or human experts (also known as mechanics) are not available at that very time. Among other things, the system will perform the following functions when designed and implemented:

The system will conclude its diagnosis based on answers of the users to specific questions posed by the system to the user.
It will provide facility that will incorporate the user opinion based on the following: Does the user agree with the system’s diagnosis.
It will provide explanations, pictures, complete some tasks quicker than humans.
It will provide a storage facility on facts and the conclusion of the inference of the system and for each user in the database.
It will process the data in order to extract rules, which completes the knowledge base.
The expert system will help train new employees to solve problems the way experienced mechanics do and place expert knowledge into machine-readable form which will enable it to be summoned at any time.

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The proposed system when implemented will help mechanics and other Toyota car users to diagnose major and minor faults of the car. Also, it will serve as reference material for subsequent researchers in this topic or related topic. In addition, the system will give the following benefits.

It will help in the improvement of productivity as having this system will enable mechanics to do more work in less time.
The system captures the knowledge of experts who someday will retire, resign or die.
The system is not vulnerable to human problems such as fatigue, emotion, and

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the system is limited to faults associated with the engine part of Toyota cars produced from the year 2000 and upward. It will be designed with an index for easy accessibility.

1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

In the course of this research work, many challenges were encountered which hindered the progress of the research work. Some of the limitations include but not limited to:

Time frame for this work was short.
Limited availability of research materials.
Lack of finance as the research was financed by the researcher who is a student.
Inability of some experts to give information to the researcher even on trivial issues.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

ACTUATOR: This is the device in a car that uses electricity to do sort of automated mechanical movements such as locks or a remote trunk opener.

CAR SENSOR: This is a technological device that dictates or senses a signal or signal or a physical condition in a car.

CAR DIAGNOSIS: Is the identification of the nature and causes of problems in a car.

BRAIN BOX: This is an electronic device that incorporates micro processors for the monitoring and control of various functions in a vehicle.

EXPERT SYSTEM: An expert system is a computer system which simulates the knowledge and expertise of a human expert.

DIAGNOSIS: This is the identification of the nature or cause of something especially a problem or fault.

FAULT: Is something that distracts from the integrity, functioning or perfection of something else.

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Full Project – Design and implementation of an expert system for car maintenance and troubleshooting

Click here to Get The Complete Research Project Chapter 1-5

Full Project – Design and implementation of an expert system for car maintenance and troubleshooting

Full Project – Design and implementation of an expert system for car maintenance and troubleshooting

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