Qualitative reasoning: an introduction

Abstract

This paper serves as an introduction to the areas of qualitative reasoning. The three main streams of qualitative reasoning are described: the component centered approach, the process centered approach and the constraint based approach. There is also some discussion on how ideas from these different approaches were adopted in the design of the Doris system. The Doris system evaluates the behaviour of mechanical systems and has been designed for use in a variety of tasks,for example design evaluation and fault diagnosis.