An Intelligent System Combining Different Resource-Bounded Reasoning Techniques

In this paper, PRIMES (Progressive Reasoning and Intelligent multiple MEthods System), a new architecture for resource-bounded reasoning that combines a form of progressive reasoning and the so-called multiple methods approach is presented. Each time-critical reasoning unit is designed in such a way that it delivers an approximate result in time whenever an overload or a failure prevents the system from producing the most accurate result. Indeed, reasoning units use approximate processing based on two salient features. First, an incremental processing unit constructs an approximate solution quickly and then refines it incrementally. Second, a multiple methods approach proposes different alternatives to solve the problem, each of them being selected according to the available resources. In allowing several resource-bounded reasoning paradigms to be combined, we hope to extend their actual scope to cover more real-world application domains.