Generation of automotive troubleshooting configuration system using an ontology-based approach

Abstract

Automotive troubleshooting configuration is a critical way to implement the specific paradigm by integrating a set of specific elements to satisfy both technical criteria and users' needs. With the objective of enabling efficient generation of automotive troubleshooting configuration by reusing configuration knowledge, an ontology-based approach to building troubleshooting configuration knowledge is presented in this study. The utilization of ontologies as metadata descriptions of the information sources is a possible approach to offer an integrated view of multiple elements libraries. A configuration meta-model is defined. The meta-concepts have explicit ontological semantics, so that they assist to identify domain concepts consistently and structure them systematically. As a result, configuration models have well-defined semantics due to the logic semantics of OWL, making it possible to automatically detect inconsistencies of configuration knowledge bases. Actual configuration processes are executed using jess, a rule engine for the java platform, by mapping OWL-based configuration facts and SWRL-based configuration criteria into jess facts and jess rules, respectively. Modeling ontologies of real automotive standard braking system is taken as an example task to show how to use the meta-concepts for configuring the troubleshooting information.