MINERVA superseeded IF/Prolog.
Please see
http://www.ifcomputer.co.jp/MINERVA
for details.
We discontinued to sell IF/Prolog Dec 31. 2003.
For current customers, we continue to provide
professional support for IF/Prolog until Dec 31, 2008.
Nordic Offshore Systems commissioned a real time expert system to
monitor the drilling process on offshore oil-drilling platforms
during the pre-production exploration phase.
The system, designed and implemented with consultants of
InterFace Computer GmbH in Germany, is a safety device to
recognize non-optimal drilling and warn of imminent danger.
Offshore oil-drilling for research purposes is a very risky process,
because the drilling action itself in only partially known
geological conditions can cause e.g. natural gas explosions
due to heat, pressure, and vibration.
Accidents carry the potential to incur major damage to personell,
equipment and the environment, and severe economic penalties
due to lost operational time.
Therefore, preventing accidents expert knowledge is very cost effective.
The system consists of three parts:
(1) Condition analysis: 120 sensor values are accumulated, evaluated
and interpreted in real time,
(2) Simulation: mathematical and physical models simulate the drilling
process and uncover discrepancies between measured and calculated
values, and
(3) Diagnosis: the discrepancies are evaluated, investigated for possible
causes and explained.
The knowledge base is written in IF/Prolog for easy maintenance and
expressive power, local mixed inference is used to obtain the
evaluation results.
This system is still now on operation in 4 sites including a nordic
offshore oil field.
Hardware: Apollo DN 570, IBM-PC, Integrated Solutions
Software: IF/Prolog, UNIX, C, Fortran, db++
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